But as he grew more and more confident of his own deserts he

deteriorated, exactly in the same measure as Emma under the same strain,

only he had more to lose and farther to fall than she. He became vainer,

more boastful, impatient of anything that could be construed as less

than fulsome admiration, suspicious of his old comrades. The word glory

was sweeter to him than the word honour. It is significant of much that

when he quotes Shakespeare’s noble lines that if it be a sin to covet

honour “I am the most offending soul alive,” he substitutes the word

glory for Shakespeare’s “honour,” apparently unconsciously. Yet glory is

the world’s voice, and honour the man’s own secret and inestimable

riches in the sight of the Eternal.

And Emma too fell. From the day of her marriage she had resolved to put

certain things behind her forever. She had received a trust. She would

justify it with every effort of mind and body. She would crown her

husband’s choice with glory. Glory again! And where had it led her? Into

a slough deeper and more miry than any she had known in the evil

experiences of her young life. Unable to face the truth, she too

hardened her heart against all the world.

Many records survive of that journey back through a flattering Europe to

the England where they hoped and believed that glory would cover all

shortcomings. She grew more and more flamboyant and boastful. Even the

Queen, Marie Caroline, began to feel that one might pay too dear for

help from a woman of the people, and the comments of some of the

Austrian nobles and of her own family in Vienna were like a breath of

cold outer air upon a hothouse friendship. She rewarded Emma with

recognition, with splendid gifts, with a latest diamond necklace wrought

in ciphers of all the Royal children and locks of their hair. She

offered her a pension of a £1000 a year, she made protestations of

warmest and eternal gratitude. Could a queen do more?

“She adores me!” Emma protested to Nelson and Sir William. “There is

nothing she would not do for me. I am the sister of her soul. Neither

time nor distance can part us.”

“No doubt, my love,” Sir William answered. “She owes everything to your

generous exertions, but our dear Nelson will agree with me that a former

Ambassadress of England can accept no pension from a foreign court.”

“Impossible, and Emma would be the last to wish it,” Nelson agreed.

Emma, who had not seen this objection perhaps with the same finality,

agreed in haste also. There were many things she could not see and

therefore blinded Nelson to—for instance, that this blaring, flaring

journey across Europe in one party was sheer madness for their hopes in

England.

If there is one thing valued in England it is a decent reserve in speech

and action—an almost stoic restraint. There are very few sins

unpardonable if introduced by perfect good taste, and there the Nelson

party sinned daily and flagrantly. Nelson touched the imagination still,

but with pity. Hear Lady Minto, writing from Vienna:

“I don’t think him altered in the least. He has the same shock

head and the same honest simple manners; but he is devoted to

‘Emma’; he thinks her quite an angel and talks of her as such to

her face and behind her back, and she leads him about like a

keeper with a bear. She must sit by him at dinner to cut his

meat, and he carries her pocket-handkerchief. He is a gig from

ribands, orders, and stars, but just the same with us as ever he

was.”

They were sorry—that was the truth of it. But none could deliver him

from himself, and Emma triumphed exceedingly. It is interesting to

wonder what she would have done could she have known the opinion of the

world. Probably nothing otherwise than she did in her immense

self-glorification. She, a Lady of the Grand Cross of Malta, given her,

alone of Englishwomen, by His Majesty, the Great White Czar!

Lord Fitzharris wrote to his father:

“Lord Nelson and the Hamiltons dined here the other day. It is

really disgusting to see her with him. Lady Hamilton is without

exception the most coarse, ill-mannered, disagreeable woman I

ever met with. The Princess [Esterhazy] had with great kindness

got a number of musicians and the famous Haydn to play, knowing

Lady H. was fond of music. Instead of attending to them she sat

down to the faro table and played Nelson’s cards for him and won

between £300 and £400. In short, I could not disguise my

feelings and joined in the general abuse of her.”

Indeed, it was difficult for any Englishman to forgive what he conceived

to be the public degradation of the national hero. Greville would have

understood perfectly, would have said he had predicted all this years

ago if Emma were not held strictly in hand. He had, on one occasion now

long, long past, said to Sir William, shaping his fine lips delicately

in the utterance of an unpleasant word: “It is impossible, my dear

Hamilton, to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” He would have

reiterated this with his own small smile if he had seen the incidents of

that journey.

Yet Emma, with her secret at her heart, wished to conciliate women’s

opinion as far as possible, if she had but known how to deal with

English women of birth and breeding. She did her best; she thrust her

friendship on Mrs. St. George, a lady of quality, who pushed it coolly

back upon her. She also viewed the party with the contempt that was a

foreshadowing of the English attitude. She set down her reflections in

her diary:

“Sir William is old and infirm, all admiration of his wife and never

spoke to-day but to applaud her. Miss Cornelia Knight seems the decided

flatterer of the Two and never opens her mouth but to show forth their

praise, and Mrs. Cadogan is—what one might expect. After dinner, we had

several songs in honour of Lord Nelson, written by Miss Knight and sung

by Lady H. She puffs the incense full in his face but he receives it

with pleasure, and snuffs it up very cordially. She loads me with all

the marks of friendship at first sight. Still she does not gain upon me.

Mr. Elliott says, ‘She will captivate the Prince of Wales, whose mind is

as vulgar as her own, and play a great part in England.’”—A judgment at

one time likely enough to be verified.

Yet behind all this glare and glitter what would the commentators have

said if they could have seen into the minds of the two chief actors?

There were moments when Emma trembled for her empire over Nelson in

thinking of the wife reinforced by English opinion. Nothing but her

beautiful face in the glass, and her enormous courage sustained her. If

she could but have taken the Queen to England in her train! What

suspicions could resist the countenance of a queen? The austere

Charlotte herself must surrender before such a battle array. But alas,

that was impossible. The tearful farewell must be said in Vienna and

Marie Caroline be left to the support of her daughter, the Empress. But

it was much on her mind. She felt her way cautiously with Mrs. St.

George.

“One takes it for granted that presentation at a court like that of

Naples, and my intimate friendship with the Queen will ensure my being

received at Windsor,” she said, one day in Dresden.

Instantly the young and charming widow was bristling with carefully

concealed caution.

“Why, madam, an ex-ambassadress is generally certain of that on the

merits of her position.”

Lady Hamilton hesitated a little. So much was known that she could not

afford to ignore the difficulties altogether.

“Oh, but, my dearest madam, your friendship emboldens me to ask your

opinion, and I know well that none is better, moving in the high circles

you are accustomed to. What is expected? Have you heard anything one way

or another?”

Mrs. St. George, none too pleased with this attribution of friendship

and thinking the question in the worst possible taste, drew herself up

perceptibly.

“Indeed, madam, I have heard nothing. These matters which affect Her

Majesty’s good pleasure are not discussed in society. I really can offer

no opinion.”

But still Emma persisted: “Indeed, I think ’tis impossible Queen

Charlotte should refuse an honour bestowed daily by a queen so much her

superior in birth and—”

“I fear, madam, I must insist that the Queen of England has no

superior—indeed, no equal,” says the fair Mrs. St. George, slightly

tossing her pretty head. “I must only attribute it to your long absence

from England that you should think otherwise.”

“No equal!” cries Emma, flushing over neck and bosom. “The daughter of

the Empress Maria Theresa, the mother of the present Empress, the

wife—”

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

of finality.

“But Sir William is the foster brother of King George. His great

services—my own—”

“Indeed, I can’t doubt,” interrupts the pretty widow again, “that their

Majesties are perfectly capable of noticing and rewarding any service.

Her Majesty is known all the world over for her propriety of judgment.”

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

“Well, for my part, I hear the Court is as dull as ditch-water! I care

little if she receives me or no. I had much sooner she would settle half

Sir William’s pension on me. Fair words butter no parsnips.”

If it be permissible to say of a lady of birth that she slightly

sniffed, it may be said of Mrs. St. George. Her disgust was almost

visible. She certainly has left it on record.

Yet one may pity the poor woman who had all at stake. Sir William was

not in the position of the ordinary husband. He knew her past, and if he

should know her present what had she to expect? And Greville, the cool,

sardonic Greville, was waiting their arrival in England, and certainly

it could not be his interest that all should be confidence and security

between her and his uncle.

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

“My own, own Nelson, I wish, I often wish, we had all never resolved to

return to England,” she said one day in the hotel at Hamburg, with the

English problems looming nearer and nearer. “We were safer there. ’Tis

impossible I should say how I dread Greville. I have been honest with

you, honest as the day, and you know ’tis his interest to make mischief

between me and Sir William. And if he suspects—”

She looked up at him with trembling lips. She had been honest up to a

certain point, but not entirely. There had been no mention of “the

little Emma.” Nelson’s rapture of fatherhood, his belief that this

marvellous experience to be was as new to her as to him, had shut her

lips there, and unspeakably she dreaded Greville on that score also. She

had always feared him even when she loved him. She feared him doubly

now.

“My own dear angel, you shall not, must not fear,” said Nelson tenderly.

“Our blessed happy secret shall be our secret always. Yet supposing the

very worst—supposing Sir William divorced you—if I found you alone and

deserted under a hedge it would be my pride to marry you. You should be

my own Duchess of Bronte, and a fig for them all!”

“Your wife?” she reminded him, her head lying wearily back on her chair.

But it was not that which made a divorce seem to her the most impossible

of things. It was the terrible fear of her own past and Greville’s

intimate knowledge of it. He would be a witness. She could hear his cold

voice with its perfect enunciation disclosing secret after secret she

trembled to think of now. There were things which in spite of Nelson’s

infatuation might well give pause to his judgment. She dared not even

consider such a possibility.

“Would I ruin you in the eyes of the world, my hero? Not for the sake of

all the agony your poor Emma must suffer. No—I will fight it through as

I have fought through many a difficulty. With your love to help me, I

don’t fear. If that failed me—”

She made an expressive pause, her beautiful mouth quivering. He knelt

and put his arm about her, resting his head on her bosom.

“The sun can as soon fall from the sky. Every day you are more and more

to me. I glory in it. I thank God for it. My wife wrote to me desiring

to meet me on landing, and I wrote to her that I judged it would be best

to meet in London. I did this, for your sake, my own heart’s beloved,

for I thought it would be easier for you to meet her there in some way

yourself can choose. But rest assured that in that matter, as in all

else, your own dear Nelson lives but to do your will. You are the best,

noblest, most beautiful woman in all the world. You have no equal—you

never have had—and all shall be as you will.”

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

touched.

“Then I want my Nelson, the dear husband of my heart, to be very, very

wise for both our sakes. You must not quarrel with your wife. However

malicious and angry she may be, we must not let her put us in the wrong.

Remember all I have to hide, and help me, help me. I want to win her

friendship—that will be the greatest safety I can have, at all events

until this is over. I will do anything in the world to please

her—swallow any insult.”

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

insult you—”

She put her hand on his mouth.

“No, no. You must be patient for my sake. Think of all we have at stake.

I would crawl to her feet to carry things off. And you must not be too

much with us at first. No, you must not. We must deny ourselves.

Remember you are the world’s hero as well as your Emma’s and every eye

will be upon you. Of course I know that will carry us through in the end

for a man who has served his country like you may do what he will. I am

not afraid of our reception in England. It is only your wife. If we can

win her, all is won and safe. And Greville. I must please him every way

I can, and he must never suspect anything.”

But for all her exhortations she dreaded Nelson’s impetuosity. She would

willingly have had him on a foreign station until the crisis was over,

much as she needed his help. There were points where she feared that she

herself could not restrain him, and one of them was his wife. What was

that cold, unknown woman doing—what thinking? She was measuring herself

this time against a force she had never fought before. She could glean

really nothing of her from Nelson. Men cannot describe women to each

other—the equation of sex forbids it. Fanny remained a silent sphinx.

They embarked at Hamburg in a storm which might have prefigured much if

they had taken it as an omen. Sir William, terribly shaken and

suffering, could only groan aloud that he wished they had never left

Naples. This cursed war and its consequences were ruining him in purse

and health alike. Emma left his groanings to seek shelter by Nelson, for

it seemed at one time as if all her doubts and fears might be settled in

a way that would make no appeal to human judgment needful. She found him

pale and serious in the little cabin, a letter in his hand, his mind

evidently abstracted from the yelling wind and rolling waves. She came

and caught his arm for safety, flung against him by the rolling of the

ship, and he drew her down beside him.

“It reminds me of the _Vanguard_ and the voyage to Palermo!” he said.

“But what does that matter? Storms blow themselves out but there are

things—”

He stopped, and put the letter in her hand. She knew the

writing—Fanny’s. She read it eagerly: “I have this instant received a

note from Admiral Young, who tells me if I can send him a letter for you

in an hour he will send it, therefore I have only time to say I have had

the pleasure of receiving two letters from you. I can with safety put my

hand on my heart and say it has been my study to please and make you

happy, and I still flatter myself we shall meet before very long. I feel

most sensibly all your kindnesses to my dear son, and I hope he will add

much to our comfort. Our good father has been in good spirits ever since

we heard from you; indeed my spirits were quite worn out, the time had

been so long. I thank God for the preservation of my dear husband, and

your recent success at Malta. The taking of the _Généreux_ seems to give

great spirits to all. God bless you, my dear husband, and grant us a

happy meeting.” So, with an affectionate prefix and ending, the letter

stood.

“It is the answer to mine forbidding her to join me in Palermo,” he

said, and there was something in his voice that shot a pang of dread to

her heart. That quiet reference to his capturing the French ship—what

man of sense could compare it with her own violent outpourings of

delight at his successes, she thought. And yet—there was a calm tone of

settled, steadfast affection, of wifely ownership, of the family

ties—“our good father”—that wounded Emma at every syllable and woke

the worst in her. It seemed to rise superior above all she could say or

do; the wife, the happy wife who had no secrets, whose position all must

do reverence to, while she—she was nothing but a hindrance, a hidden

shame, the blot on an honour that nothing else could have spotted. It

seemed to set Lady Nelson apart and beyond her. She handed it coldly

back.

“A wife who can take your glories so coldly is what I can’t understand.

I should have thought—but no matter! If it moves you—if you think she

is worthy of your greatness—”

He understood the note of pain in her voice, and clasped her hand in

his. She could feel its feverish heat; the nervous thrill in it.

“She is my wife no longer. It is you—my own Emma, the mother of my

child. But you have a generous soul, you must know from that letter she

has heard the base stories that were scattered from Palermo, and she

wants to assure me that neither those nor my refusing to let her come

out have made any difference. She is a woman I must respect to my last

day for I have never known a spot in her—no, not one. If I could keep

her as a friend I would, but the world is so impossible—impossible to

what it can’t understand or value. Still, would my Emma value her

Nelson, if he could cast such a woman off without a pang? God knows I

dread that meeting in London, and to wound her tender heart!”

“Tender?” she cried. “I should have said _not_ tender—hard. See that

cold, cold letter, and you coming home with such honours as was never

seen in the world. No—don’t mistake her. She will value the world’s

good opinion. She won’t throw away all for you, as I’ve done with all

the dangers and ruin likely before me. The one is love; the other—I

don’t know what to call it.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” he said, his nervous face quivering

and lips twitching. “If you asked me I would never see her again. I am

all yours—body and soul until death us do part. But—she is a good

woman.”

“And I am not good? Oh, Nelson, is this the reward of such love as was

never known?”

“You are my saint, my guardian angel. There is not a thought of my heart

inconstant to you. She is nothing—nothing! See!”

He tore the letter into tiny fragments, unclosed the porthole by an

inch, and as the wind screamed in at it, he pushed his fingers through,

and sent the fragments flying on the gale. He closed it again and

returned to his seat by Emma.

“_That_ for her!” he said. Even to Emma in her triumph there was

something shocking in the incident. Love! To what could it drive a man?

Yet she was glad at heart.

They landed in a storm so terrible that only Nelson’s advice and

entreaties compelled the pilot to bow to his better judgment, and surely

the sight of the English welcome was reassuring, for all Yarmouth had

turned out to meet the returning hero. Emma too was not forgotten. Amid

the music and rejoicings a ring of fine topaz set in brilliants was

bestowed upon her by the enthusiastic welcomers. Sir William was quietly

in the background, used indeed by this time to that effacement.

Speeches, sentiments, toasts, abounded. Her smiles, bows, exuberance,

fanned the popular welcome into roaring flame. Never was such a scene.

“And London will beat it!” she said, triumphant, as they entered the

coach for the journey. “We are safe, safe in England. It will be Naples,

Palermo, only more, because it’s our own dear country.”

But Nelson was silent. His fears were greater than his hopes. Yet Emma

was always right and surely her charms would conquer England as they had

done Italy. On her he relied. But that welcome was unfortunate for it

made her more self-confident, less inclined to be conciliatory than ever

before. She was certain they could have it all their own way.

CHAPTER XXV

FANNY

IT was a still Sunday afternoon with a November mist clinging like a

cold breath to London, daylight still but the lights showing little

starry points in the streets below when Fanny and his old father waited

for Nelson at Nerot’s Hotel in St. James’s.

She was a young woman of thirty-six, “not beautiful but eminently

pleasing,” as a friend described her, with clear hazel eyes matching

abundant hair arranged low over her forehead, almost hiding the brown,

finely-marked eyebrows. The charm of her face was the mouth, set in with

the pressure of a hinted dimple at each corner and very ready to break

into a smile to match the latent smile in her eyes. Her figure was

slight and well-formed, under a plain dress of brown satin a little

staid in its design for her years, especially with the broad falling

collar of Maltese lace and sleeves to match, which Nelson had sent her

from the Mediterranean, and which certainly would be more suitable ten

years hence. The sleeves half hid really beautiful little hands with a

quick nervous gesture about them when she was eager, which the Nelson

daughters considered foreign and affected.

But Frances Nelson cared very little about things of that order. She had

never gone much into society, was rather alarmed than otherwise by the

daring, low-bosomed fashions of the day, imported from the license of

France, and was better pleased to escape notice than to attract it.

Besides, except for Nelson’s visits to England, her life had been mostly

passed in the village of Burnham Thorpe, as the companion of Nelson’s

old father: a dull life for a young woman, and one which his daughters,

Mrs. Matcham and Mrs. Bolton, were very well pleased to commit to the

daughter-in-law.

She really had very little in common with the Nelsons. She had been

married extremely young to her first husband, Dr. Nisbet, and was left a

widow next year with a child—Josiah. But her life in the Leeward

Islands and her few travels with Nelson had given her at least a glimpse

of the world outside England, and she was apt to think the family narrow

and ignorant. She thought them also excitable and exaggerated in their

emotions, which was true enough in its way, and they returned the

compliment by styling her cold, reserved, uninteresting. They could not

imagine what Horatio had seen in a widow, who had only £4000 “to her

fortune” when all was said and done.

Still, it was owned that Fanny was sensible and useful. She had not the

sensibility they could admire, was not liable like themselves to

interesting heart spasms on the slightest excitement, took things

quietly and composedly, and might even be suspected of airs of

superiority to those who had sensitive feelings and displayed them. Yet

their father would have been a problem without her and certainly none of

the sons or their wives coveted his company. Perhaps it was on the whole

better she was so staid and quiet. A livelier young woman might have

been urgent for more amusement, and old Mr. Nelson was attached to her.

She was certainly reserved. It was extraordinarily difficult for her to

express what she felt, and in that respect she was a contrast indeed to

her husband, whose emotions, like his family’s, were always more or less

in the extreme. For the rest, she seemed to have little initiative,

agreed with his opinions gently, and was compliant almost to a fault.

His father was exceedingly fond of her and thought her the ideal wife

for Horatio, who had agreed in that opinion formerly. In short, a woman

of whom it would be difficult to predict her action in really disturbing

circumstances.

It was characteristic of her reserve that while all the family were

whispering together with clustered heads of the stories which had come

in from Naples and Palermo she never uttered a word on the subject. Mrs.

Bolton, Mrs. Matcham, both sailed as near the wind as they dared when

they visited their father, but Fanny was silent. Not meaningly and

bodingly silent, but calmly. It was as if she had heard nothing. For the

life of them the two bustling women could not make her out, and went

away, discussing the “hussy” at Naples, and lamenting Fanny’s stupidity,

who, if she had written “strongly” to Horatio would only have been doing

her duty as a wife and might have made some impression. In reality, the

quiet woman whose hazel eyes were so reticent had heard more than any of

them and lived in an agony of fear and jealous pain. A Nelson would have

stormed about the room, stormed in speech and on paper and decreased the

pressure somehow by this kind of exhalation. She could not. She endured.

She made little tentatives, small hints, in her letters to him which she

prayed he might take advantage of for explanation and, when he never

did, was helpless and could say no more. She crimsoned even when alone

at the mere thought of upbraiding her husband with any liking for

another woman.

But she watched his letters, lynx-eyed for any signs of change, and

found plenty. “My dearest Fanny,” “My beloved wife,” became “My dear

Fanny,” and her “most loving and affectionate husband,” became

“affectionate” and from that zero, as it seemed to her, the thermometer

never rose again.

And now at last, after long years, they were to meet, and in spite of

her calm exterior she was trembling in every limb as if with ague, and

could hardly answer the old man’s restless questions for the dryness in

her throat.

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

change in him.”

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

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

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

“No, and that’s the index of a man’s character—Does he consider his

parents? If that’s right, all the rest follows. Ah, you’re a fortunate

woman, Fanny. He has given you a great position. What, did I hear a

coach down below?”

“No, father, don’t move. I will warn you in time. Stay, let me arrange

your hair. I want him to see you at your best.”

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

his forehead.

“How cold your hands are. Make up the fire. The room is cheerless

compared to my study at home,” he said, shivering.

It was cheerless and full of fog. The heavy red damask curtains were

looped up in formal folds, the chairs set in line against the

flock-papered walls, a stiff armchair on either side of the smouldering

fire. The frost seemed to have entered into her soul. Her teeth were

almost chattering with cold and fear.

Hark! Far off a cheer! The cheering of a crowd—London shouting its

welcome to an honoured guest. She went quietly to the window and looked

out on the waiting, silent crowds beneath.

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

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

flaming fire.

The cheering grew and grew. It swelled louder, louder. It was as though

all the lesser voices of London were drowned in that one unloosing of

the heart of a nation. It was grand, terrifying, like the roar of a lion

in his deserts. Her face grew deadly pale as she listened.

And now, suddenly and as if at a signal, the crowds beneath broke forth

into cheering also. The room vibrated to it, the very air shook forth

with the sound of men’s voices mingled with the shriller cries of women.

She turned, wordless, and beckoned to his father, who joined her at the

window.

The crowd, denser now, had parted and made a narrow lane through the

midst. They stood packed on either side, cheering, fluttering

handkerchiefs and scarfs—anything!—and turning the corner, came a

carriage, with four horses—open.

In the back seat was her husband in full uniform, with a constellation

of stars and gold medals on his breast. Beside him, a beautiful woman in

plumed hat and furred pelisse, bowing, smiling right and left. In the

seat before them a thin distinguished old man taking no active part, but

looking on with a kind of detached amusement and pleasure.

The carriage moved very slowly. She could see it all in lamplight and

daylight, like a bright picture.

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

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

Her voice was as quiet as when she read aloud in the parsonage study.

Her heart seemed to have ceased beating.

Now the carriage was drawing up at the hotel door. The manager, the

staff, were waiting on the steps as if for Royalty. Sir William

descended first, then Nelson, and together they aided Lady Hamilton’s

graceful descent, the magnificent folds of fur falling about her. Fanny

drew back from the window and stood by the fire.

Five, ten minutes passed. Of course there would be greetings downstairs,

questions, answers. Then feet in the passage outside; a voice—“This

way, my Lord,” and the door opened. He came in—if her life depended

upon it she could not have moved a limb. Her very agitation froze her,

and it was the old man who got at him first and clasped his hand, and

put a feeble arm about his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. He did

not even see her in the darkening shadows of the room.

“My dear, dear father!” he said. Oh, well-remembered voice! Oh, pain and

joy unspeakable! “It’s home to see you again. Is Fanny at Burnham

Thorpe?”

She heard the quick startle in his tone, and then she moved into the

firelight at last.

“I’m here, my dear husband.”

That was all. There were a million things she wanted to say, pleadings,

loving words, passionate entreaties. But how could she? His father was

there. They should have met alone, it was cruel, cruel that they had

not, and yet even if they had, what could she have said? Nothing,

nothing. When the heart is too full it chokes on its own utterances.

He took her hand and kissed her cheek. It was a moment of agonizing

embarrassment to her. His father grasped his shoulder and led him to a

chair by the fire and poured out all the questions she would have asked

if she had dared. But, indeed, her heart was near to bursting. She had

been forbidden to meet him, but that bold beautiful woman had shared all

the honours of his return and was in London also now, waiting her time.

All the Palermitan stories crowded on her mind. Would not one think that

a wife who had never offended had more claim than that cold kiss?

She asked him in her soft voice whether he was well; whether he had any

pain in what was left of his arm?—the pathetic empty sleeve wrung her

heart. She had gathered up the little scraps of family news to tell him;

the Boltons, the Matchams, his brothers, William and Maurice, would be

coming up next day. Yes, they were all well, all full of eagerness to

see him. She did her best, God knows, but what can a woman do so cruelly

hampered? It all sounded stiff and unnatural. He took it for anger and

answered with cold punctuality.

The lights must be lit; he wished to see how his father looked; and

presently there was the mild illumination of wax candles. She felt

rather than saw him stealing a furtive glance at her.

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

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

“My constitution is never a strong one and I have had many cares and

anxieties, not to mention dangers, of late years. The Aboukir wound

gives me trouble still at times. But I owe everything to the unwearied

goodness of my friends, Sir William and Lady Hamilton. But for them I

should not be alive to greet you and my father, and whatever you feel

for me you should certainly repay in gratitude to them. They have put up

at this hotel until they can secure a house, and as I shall be much

engaged at the Admiralty, it is my hope that you will show Lady Hamilton

every attention possible. I shall take it as a kindness to myself. You

owe her much for her goodness to Josiah also.”

“I will do my best,” her pale lips shaped. Josiah! His letters and angry

comments on the intimacy which all the world talked of had been a sword

in her heart. If Nelson did but know!—but she could not tell him.

“I wrote at your wish and invited them to stay at Round Wood. I hope the

letter met you at Yarmouth,” she said timidly.

“Certainly, and I thought it very proper. I handed it to Lady Hamilton.

I have asked them to dine with us presently. You and my father cannot

too soon meet friends to whom I owe so much.”

Soon indeed! Then even the first meeting was to be broken in upon with

suffering! She recalled other returns while he and his father talked on.

How eagerly he had clasped her in his arms; how much there had been to

hear and tell; what sympathy, eager understanding in it all—and the

dear, dear nights when they had been alone; and she lay in his arms and

could not sleep for joy to hear his quiet breathing again. But no one

could have guessed these thoughts from her quiet face fixed on the fire

as she sat listening and very silent now. Of course he thought her angry

and sullen; of course he fiercely resented it. She looked older, too,

her face seemed dimmed and dull after the brilliant roseate beauty his

eyes had feasted on, his lips had tasted.

“Well, we must prepare for dinner!” he said at last, getting up. “I

trust my dear father will enjoy meeting two of the most eminent men and

women in the world. I ordered dinner as I came up, Fanny. Which is my

room?”

“My—” She moved forward silently and led the way to a large and

London-dingy bedroom adjoining the sitting-room. He looked with

disfavour at the great draped four-poster with its drab curtains and

tester.

“I can’t sleep in that catafalque!” he said. “I want fresh air. Make

them put me up a camp bed near the door, or better still in the room

adjoining, for I am often disturbed at night, and you look as if you

needed your sleep. Better give the order now.”

She rang the bell and gave it, and his “traps,” as he called them, were

put in the room which opened, hotel-fashion, into hers. For the first

time she recovered herself a little and carried her head higher. That

insult, for so she took it, fired even her gentleness. He left the door

open between them and talked while she changed her dress for dinner.

Indeed she had little to change it to. She had supposed it would be as

usual but a day or two in London, and had not made very extensive

preparations. But she had a black satin with lace and a bandeau of rows

of seed-pearl for her hair, and a chain set with small pearls which had

been a gift from his prize money. She dressed herself to the best

advantage and looked in the muslin-draped glass and thought she would

pass. More she could not feel; and after all, what use to compete with a

beauty of European notoriety? She did not ask his opinion when her

toilette was finished as she had been accustomed to do.

They went together into the sitting-room when they were ready. It was

now brilliant with lights, and a well-spread table, and old Mr. Nelson

in the ceremonious evening dress of a clergyman of the old school, and

Nelson in silk stockings and orders, and obsequious waiters hovering

about and making conversation impossible.

It seemed to Fanny that she could not collect her thoughts—it was

dream-like, she had not a word to say.

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

Miss Knight.”

Habit and breeding will pull a woman together when nothing else will,

and Fanny in her desperate need moved forward composedly, with her quiet

curtsey to either lady.

Emma trailed in in the gorgeous gold gown of Palermo, too splendid by

far for so simple an occasion, girdled below her full bosom with a

girdle in the Directory fashion, set with diamonds.

The bandeau which bound her luxuriant curls was of diamonds also, and

about her neck the magnificent diamond necklace lately presented by

Marie Caroline with the ciphers of the Royal children. Even a plain

woman must have glowed in such a dress set off with such a galaxy of

jewels but with her velvet skin of lilies and roses, her bright hair,

and the crimson bow of her lips she was a figure of dazzling beauty to

strike the coldest into amazement. It was a theatrical entry,

theatrically contrived with all her dramatic instinct brought to bear,

and for the moment it succeeded. Fanny’s heart sank like lead. What

hope, what help against such charms? She was an illumination in the

room—the very light all gathered about her, and seemed to be reflected

in her. Miss Cornelia Knight was an agreeable, brown-complexioned woman

in purple—a well-chosen foil for the other’s brilliance. Indeed, Emma’s

heart exulted as she greeted with all her exuberance the quiet Fanny in

her “dowdy” dress, for so she classed it. If _that_ was what she had

been dreading!—one may finish the sentence on a note of triumph. She

took possession of the party. She showered offers of attention on Fanny.

Had she been presented yet on the peerage? No? Then she herself would

undertake the presentation after her own. She quite expected that one of

Sir William’s Hamilton cousins would present her. And nothing would be

easier to arrange.

Dinner. Oh, might she show her Ladyship exactly how Lord Nelson liked

his meat cut up? She had done it all the way back from Palermo but

naturally must now surrender the pleasure to his good wife. Funny, on

the contrary, surrendered it to her—it was so obviously the wish—and

her own place was at the head of the table with Sir William in

attendance.

He revolted her, though after a very different fashion. His manners were

perfect, polished, easy, even her inexperience could tell that, but his

stories of the Neapolitan Court! His smiling references to the Queen’s

amours as something quite in the order of things and to be expected! His

hints of French corruption and the manners of the now celebrated

Josephine, the wife of the Corsican adventurer! Good heavens, what

people had Nelson fallen amongst? What a society was it where such

subjects could be discussed! She did her best to reply with courtesy,

and Sir William found her a dull young woman and betook himself to the

conversation between Miss Knight and Mr. Nelson, throwing in comments on

her spirited story of the flight to Palermo, and the still more

marvellous history of the return of the _Foudroyant_ to Naples, and the

avenging of the King of the Two Sicilies on his rebels, including the

hanging of his traitor Admiral Caracciolo, as Miss Knight called him.

“The treacherous animal, he well deserved his fate!” said Sir William,

enjoying his glass of the fashionable pink champagne. “And it is not the

least of the glories of your glorious husband, madam, that he had the

pleasure of ordering his ignominious death. He desired to be shot like a

gentleman but my Lord ordered him hanged as the dog he was.”

Again Fanny was silent. She had heard through naval friends in London of

the strong censure expressed at the Admiralty, and indeed at Court, on

Nelson’s action in thus condemning a foreign admiral. The rights of it

she could not know and dared not judge, but it appeared in any case no

subject for exultation. Emma’s keen eye and ear were on the talk at that

end of the table, and she intervened.

“Indeed, I am certain her Ladyship must have rejoiced with the rest of

us when she heard that such a traitor had met with his reward. Oh,

madam, did you but know my adorable Queen you would share in the joy

that filled us when those rebels were punished by your husband’s noble

courage. There is not one admiral in a thousand would have took it in

his hands like him.”

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

and proper.”

She got that out, flushing, and how cold and inadequate it sounded! But

she was not the woman to rejoice over corpses dangling at the yard-arm

even if she had understood the subject better than she did. Her answer

fell into a silence, and then Miss Knight resumed her praises and Sir

William commented, and the hostess sat isolated, outshone and forgotten.

Emma was in her most aggressive mood of boastful praise of Nelson’s and

her own doings. She had meant to be entirely conciliatory to Lady

Nelson, and only achieved condescension. An unreasonable anger possessed

her, as if the woman had no business to exist. Certainly she feared her

no more. She could understand her at a glance and foresee her rôle. She

would raise no objection to the friendship; she would be tame, obedient,

easily hoodwinked; a convenient shield until happier days should come.

No, all was well. Really, almost a negligible quantity. She thanked her

graciously for her invitation to Round Wood. Later on, she quite hoped

it might be possible to accept, but at present she and Sir William were

so overwhelmed with invitations from Royalty downwards that dear Lady

Nelson would understand it was not possible, and so forth.

But Fanny’s quiet eyes were noting everything. Emma was not behind Sir

William and far beyond Nelson in the refilling of her glass with the

pink champagne which Fanny ignored. Her large commanding figure promised

corpulence later on. She spoke too loudly, laughed too often, her speech

had no refinement—could not have. What can eradicate origins? She

puffed the incense full in Nelson’s face, as another observer had said,

and Fanny’s heart saddened, for he had always had too much of the Nelson

exaggeration in speech and feeling himself to satisfy her wholly. Even

before this she would have prayed him to leave boasting as well as

boarding to others if she had dared, and now his loud voice and

over-emphasis frightened her.

That dinner was Purgatory to her. It was full of interest to Mr. Nelson,

who found all the enthusiasm and excitements highly to his taste, and so

expressed himself when the guests had departed with loud hopes of a

speedy reunion.

“Indeed, we have had a breath of the great world to-night!” says he,

rubbing his hands. “I declare, Horatio, I know not when I have been so

interested. Sir William is indeed a man of the first fashion, and her

Ladyship a woman of unsurpassable beauty. What did my quiet Fanny think?

Her opinion is always valuable.”

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

“No one can dispute her beauty, sir. It exceeds the pictures of her I

have seen exhibited. But, if my opinion is asked, I think they are

personages who move in a very different world from the simple one to

which we are accustomed.”

“They move in _my_ world,” Nelson interrupted angrily. “And as I have

raised you to that world by my successes I shall hope you will do me no

discredit with my friends. Much of what you rejoice in now you owe to

the Hamiltons, for without them it could not have been accomplished.”

“I hope indeed we shall both of us have cause to rejoice!” she said,

strangling a sob in her throat. “You must pardon me if as yet I am a

little strange to such society and such stories as Sir William Hamilton

gave me of Naples.”

He turned away, then coldly: “I’m dead tired after the journey, and

to-morrow will be a busy day.”

He kissed her in the great dingy bedroom and she saw him no more that

night. Not only that day but the next were busy beyond all words. He

must visit the Admiralty, and returned chagrined by his reception. The

truth was the Palermitan stories had poisoned all authoritative sources

in England, and his arrival with the Hamiltons, following on the

ill-judged journey across Europe, had disgusted many. Public opinion was

slowly but surely ranking itself on Fanny’s side, and she, poor

bewildered woman, did not know what to do with it.

Nelson had returned all-glorious, but the air was chill after the

tropical praise of the Mediterranean. Lord Spencer of the Admiralty had

been his friend, but now—he came back furious and flung himself into a

chair, before Fanny, who was quietly knitting.

“The Lady of the Admiralty was as cool as ice to me,” he said, with

sarcasm that ill hid his annoyance. “Lady Spencer, forsooth! I care

little enough for it. Let them get another admiral to fight their

battles when they want one! Yet she wrote to me after the Nile a letter

that almost overwhelmed me with praise. Women—women!—the most

changeable frivolous creatures on all God’s earth. I know but one who

never changes; whose warm candid soul is always the same. Oh, if all

were like that, what a world it would be! Do you drive out with Lady

Hamilton to-day?”

“Certainly, if you wish it!” she said, with her eyes on her knitting.

She, who knew the stories afloat, thought their association ill-judged,

but what could she say?

“Naturally I wish it, while gratitude is of any consequence, and Heaven

knows that you and all the world might learn from her kind heart and

accomplishments which I have never seen equalled.”

Silence.

“I go to Court to-morrow,” he said after a while, “and in the evening

the Hamiltons dine with us again.”

He went and returned indignant at his reception by the King. Fanny asked

him kindly if all had satisfied him, and had a short “No” for her pains

and then a diatribe against Royal ingratitude as contrasted with the

Neapolitan condescensions. She heard later that day from a source she

could trust that His Majesty merely asked after Nelson’s health, and

without waiting for an answer turned away and talked with another

officer in great good humour. It wrung her heart, and the more so

because she knew the cause but too well. It had been very different with

the King formerly. She could remember hearing from the faithful Davison

how His Majesty had spoken of her husband “with the tenderness of a

father,” and now, now, crowned with the glories of Teneriffe, St.

Vincent, the Nile, and so much more, he was coldly put aside, and—good

God!—for what a woman! She revolved her duty in an agony—to speak or

not to speak? To refuse to be seen with her, or go meekly on according

to Nelson’s orders? She could not yet decide.

The town rang with stories of the pair. Nelson and Lady Hamilton had

been unable to believe that the adulation of Naples and Palermo would

not cover everything. They could not be made to realize that it made

their case worse.

The sincere Troubridge visited Miss Cornelia Knight and warned her of

the storm about to break. She had taken refuge with Mrs. Cadogan but he

assured her that was not sufficient.

“I assure you, madam, that no lady who wishes to escape general censure

will associate herself with any connection of Lady Hamilton. I owe your

mother a kindness which I must repay in this fashion. Lord Nelson’s

noble character and glorious career may bear him scatheless, and I trust

it will, but I understand the word has gone forth against Lady

Hamilton.”

Miss Knight packed up her goods incontinent and fled the same day to

shelter under the wing of Mrs. Nepean, wife of the secretary of the

Admiralty. Emma tossed her head and grew even louder and more scornful

of such fair-weather friends.

Indeed, the poor woman had her own terrible battle to fight, and though

she feared Lady Nelson no more, she might well fear her own courage. She

dared not leave London, for every eye would fasten on her every

movement. She dared not leave Sir William, for that she had never done

since their marriage and it must provoke his inevitable suspicion. Her

battle must be fought with only her mother’s help, under the roof of the

house they had now taken in Piccadilly, and in horrible secrecy and

dread—a desperate throw for safety.

Let the initial error be granted, and much that appears detestable in

her conduct becomes comprehensible. How could she give her cause away

without ruining Nelson? How could she hide her secret but by clinging to

Lady Nelson, to every person or thing which could help her to the

assumption of innocence? And that she hurt her cause by her loud

boastings and triumphings and public protestations of the innocence of

her friendship for Nelson, and the bond between her and his wife, her

breeding made her as incapable of understanding as though she belonged

to another planet.

She grew more blatant and preposterous daily in her frantic efforts to

conquer opinion, and little knew how Lady Nelson’s mute face of sorrow,

dragged in her wake, spoke against her trumpet-tongued with all who had

hearts to feel. As for Nelson, Beckford summed it up in a phrase: “She

can make him believe anything she chooses.” She could—and did.

It was one evening when she was out, dazzling in her diamonds at the

opera and Sir William was at home with a cold, that Greville came to pay

one of his quiet visits to his uncle. He was still a bachelor. His ill

success with Miss Middleton had disinclined him to expose himself to any

more rebuffs, and a comfortable minor Court appointment really suited

him far better than a wife. Especially with his views on the succession

to Sir William’s property. He found him lying by the fire on a couch

drawn up and comfortably screened against draughts, a catalogue in his

hand.

“Rejoice with me, my dear Greville. The very best of good news! I have

heard to-day that many of my precious cases were saved from the wreck of

the _Colossus_—some of the vases and pictures I most prized.”

Greville was sincerely warm in his congratulations. That, indeed, was a

recovery that appealed both to his taste and his sense of money value.

“Yes, and it is my intention to have a sale of some of the objects. Not

enough to crowd the market—something very choice and select. I know

Beckford and others will be keen to purchase.”

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

Hamilton?”

“Must. I need the money. I am £2000 in debt to Nelson for expenses at

Palermo, not to mention other and heavier debts. I am sorry to say—for

I can be frank with you—that a spirit of extravagance possesses Emma

which alarms me very much. And then there were our fearful losses in the

Jacobin riot in Naples for which the Government ought certainly to

compensate me. And my pension is not satisfactorily settled by any

means.”

“True,” said Greville thoughtfully. “Still, it is a painful necessity.

And the pictures?”

“I shall sell three portraits of Emma. I have so many, and they are

attractive enough to fetch a large price.”

“No doubt.” Greville’s mind was turning to the Edgware Row days and

Emma’s tearful anxiety if the stipulated allowance was exceeded by a

shilling. She had certainly changed since then.

“I sometimes think you have never understood her,” he said. “Controlled,

she has a fine character. Uncontrolled, a danger to herself and others.”

“True, but you are aware that as a man grows to my age his only desire

is for peace. It is worth giving way in trifles to secure it.”

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

“Most things,” says Sir William with his little cynical smile. “Nothing

really matters so much as we are apt to suppose.”

There was a pause. Greville could not echo that sentiment. There were

things which mattered much to him personally which were bound up with

Hamilton’s affairs.

“I have sometimes wondered,” he said slowly, “whether you are aware of

the talk flying round the town about Emma’s intimacy with Nelson? It is

accusing her in no way to allude to it, for we both know what talk is

worth. Still, it is there.”

Sir William’s smile did not relax.

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

honourable.”

“No doubt. But I assure you the scandal has reached an alarming height,

and she is not meeting it wisely. This constant persecution of Lady

Nelson—for so it is called—sets all sympathy against her.”

“Emma must pursue her own methods,” Sir William said coolly. “I have

long ceased to be responsible for her actions. If I were to check her it

would make storms in the house to which I am quite unequal. You remember

her temper of old, Greville.”

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

“I cannot, and I assure you it has gained strength with years. No—I am

not for opposing Emma.”

“But, my dear Hamilton, do I understand that these rumours give you no

pain? I do but my duty in telling you that you are represented as

completely hoodwinked and under hers and Nelson’s influence. Heaven

forbid I should say it is true, but that is the notion freely

expressed.”

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

He reckoned off on his delicate fingers a score of names in the highest

positions, which the present recorder, for the peace of great families,

reserves in his own discretion.

“I am really content to suffer in such good company,” he concluded

placidly. “There is an ignorance, my dear Greville, which is as

protective as the shell of the tortoise. I have full confidence in

Emma’s high principles and the extraordinary discretion of Nelson. And

if I had not, I should act just the same. For God’s sake, imagine me as

the wronged hero of a trial for crim. con. What have I ever done to

deserve the suspicion of being such a fool as to incur it, and after

such a marriage as mine? Consider my marriage, and say no more. I repeat

that I have the usual confidence in my wife and my friend.”

Greville understood him perfectly. Indeed, all the old man said was

true, and it jumped entirely with Greville’s own convictions. These

things happened, and one met them in the way which gave one least

trouble. There was no more to be said. Yet he asked one question.

“My dear Hamilton, our friendship is of so many years’ standing that I

venture to ask: Do these rumours trouble you? Are you discomposed or

annoyed?”

“Never less!” said Sir William, laying the delicate veined hand on his

catalogue. “_These_ are the matters which really interest me. The world

is receding—I never minded its opinion very greatly; I mind it not at

all now. I should like to see you and a few other congenial friends

frequently, and I have no objection to telling you that my will is made,

and I have taken what I conceive to be the proper attitude toward my

poor Emma’s extravagance. I have no doubt that her friendship with

Nelson will have pecuniary results. Nor can I object to telling you that

you are not only my executor but my residuary legatee.”

Greville’s thanks were warm and heart-felt. He took his cue perfectly

from that moment. Certainly Sir William should be troubled with no

rumours and no scandals from him. He should have the classic peace he

desired.

Emma would have rejoiced in her safety from one of her blackest dreads.

Yet even she might have thought the price of safety high. She certainly

had reason to do so later.

The gods sell everything at a fair price.

CHAPTER XXVI

PARTING

THERE is a most absolute and splendid justice in the remorseless

sequence of cause and effect, and those who play at dice with angry gods

cannot win.

Nelson had cause to know that truth in the days that followed. He was

losing, losing steadily. There were moments of frantic joy buried like

jewels in a rubble of fears, anxieties and disappointments. It would

always be right next day, but never was. Emma and he would always find

perfect bliss—to-morrow. But that to-morrow was the rainbow in the

field beyond and to-day he was face to face with Emma’s troubles and

Fanny’s tragedy.

He knew it was a tragedy and denied it fiercely to himself and to Emma.

She was cold, dull, heartless. She did not care a rap. What comfort

could a man find in a pale, silent creature like that? He wanted warmth

and colour; he wanted tender flattery. Was it his fault if she had

changed in his last absence? He wanted to be friends provided she would

fall in joyfully with all his views regarding Emma, and she would not.

She obeyed his wishes like a slave. They were seldom alone; he contrived

that; but when they were, little was said and less answered.

But—there is justice. Though Lady Nelson made no plea for herself, the

world made it for her. There was deep indignation against the treatment

she was receiving. Queen Charlotte entirely refused to recognize Emma,

and this although Sir William made his best interest with the King, his

foster brother. The third George could be a veritable farmer George for

bluffness when he so pleased, and he told Sir William to his face that

he might very well remember how much he had disapproved the marriage,

how he had assured him at the time that whatever the Neapolitan Court

might do, the English Court would hold to its rules; though he himself

would be always welcome. And to Emma’s rage and Nelson’s infinite

disgust, Sir William serenely attended the next Court.

“It would make a talk if I did not, and at my age I cannot be troubled,”

he said, with a smile which had a family resemblance to Greville’s.

“It would trouble _me_ to attend without my wife,” Nelson said, a little

too bluntly.

“Yet I have not seen you take her,” Sir William rejoined with the same

fine smile, and the conversation dropped.

And the more public opinion set against him, the more defiant Nelson

grew. In his own words, he was fixed as Fate, and daily more bound to

the woman whose ordeal was drawing nearer.

“It is not,” said Sir William Hotham, a typical man about town

discoursing at his club, “that London has turned suddenly moral or that

any sensible person cares a damn about Nelson’s chastity. It’s his

confounded vanity that leads him to brandish himself and the woman in

the face of society and think every one is to swallow it because he is

the great Lord Nelson. And such a woman! As for that poor wife of

his—the least a man can do is to hide that sort of weakness. It’s

damned unjustifiable to wound her feelings publicly as he does, when

there isn’t a man or woman alive but knows she’s one of the best good

women that ever stepped. Look at him now, going off to Fonthill with the

Hamiltons for Christmas and leaving her alone here in town, and he only

lately home from sea! I declare I can barely stand it, though God knows

it’s no concern of mine.”

“The mischief is,” said another man, in the little group at the club,

“that Nelson is no rake. If he were, he would manage his affairs with

much better breeding and a deal more consideration for that poor wife of

his. He’s as infatuated as a fool about the Hamilton woman as if he were

a boy of sixteen in love for the first time—which is exactly the case.

It’s his damned innocence that’s more than half the trouble.”

But pity or no pity, the climax was nearly upon Fanny now. Nothing could

stave it off. She spent her solitary Christmas sitting at the window of

their lodgings in Arlington Street and wondering whether in all broad

London there was any heart so heavy as hers. Not in London perhaps, but

certainly in the midst of all the gaiety at Beckford’s palace of

Fonthill. Nelson was sick in spirit—and the more mortally offended with

his wife because he knew that in ways he could not explain to himself

she was the cause of his unrest—even in Emma’s company and the noisy

gaieties of Beckford’s meretricious Fonthill; all of which suited her

Ladyship exceedingly well.

They returned to London, and Fanny had her orders to attend the

Hamiltons to the opera and show herself in the box with them. Emma made

a point of that, for the time was not now far distant when Lady Nelson’s

countenance might be vital to her in Sir William’s and the world’s eyes.

Fanny pleaded fatigue, but soon saw there was no alternative. She put on

her quiet black satin and sat in the box a little behind the beautiful

glittering Emma in her purple spangled satin with the _cachemire_

draping her fair shoulders. There were very few eyes in the house which

were not turned upon that box, with their owners speculating on the

drama it held. Nelson sat in front, brilliant in stars and orders as

Emma in jewels. Sir William went placidly to sleep.

Half-way through the performance, in the very midst of the great soprano

aria, “Non dirmi addio,” where the prima donna swoons into the arms of

the distracted tenor, Emma followed her example and fainted quietly

away. Nelson and her husband sprang together to her assistance. Fanny

sat death-still, not moving a finger. It was as if something had snapped

in her brain with the result of an extraordinary lucidity in all her

perceptions. She saw, she understood, and her own hitherto obtuseness

filled her with shame and self-disgust. No wonder that Nelson, that

every one despised her. She had carried obedience into caricature and

made a show of herself for all London. She rose and walked out of the

box without a look in Emma’s direction.

Presently the two men followed, supporting Emma between them. She was

recovering but still pale as death, her eyes showing but as a blue line

under heavy lids. They had dragged some cushions out of the box and made

a kind of couch for her in the passage, which was quite empty.

“Have you no smelling salts?” Nelson said imperiously. He was stooping

over the sufferer with Sir William. There was no direct answer.

“I am going home,” Fanny said. She pulled her cloak about her and turned

her back on the group without another word. She walked swiftly along the

passage.

“My dear Nelson, pray attend to your wife. I will see to Emma. See, she

is recovering quickly. Lady Nelson cannot return alone.” So said Sir

William, realizing the potentialities of the situation and anxious to

avoid them. An attendant came hurrying up with salts, and Nelson strode

away after his wife with a heart full of anger which was but pain

reversed.

He overtook her half-way down the stairs, and calling a carriage, put

her in in dead silence, and followed her. Not a word was said on the way

to Arlington Street, the wheels jolting over the cobbles, and the dim

lamps shining and darkening as they passed. Fanny opened her own door at

the end, and got out and went upstairs. She knew she must face it now,

and a kind of desperate resolution came to her. Things could not last

like this. A change there must be and who could tell it might not be for

the better? Certainly nothing could be worse.

Nelson followed her and shut the door of the sitting-room. He looked ill

and pale in his fine coat with its stars; even less fit to face the

ordeal than she. But he moved straight up to the attack and laid his

ship alongside the enemy, as he always did at sea. She sat down, quite

unable to stand.

“I wish to know why you publicly insulted Lady Hamilton? Why, when she

fainted, did you not show her the common humanity of help as one woman

to another? Why did you turn your back on her and walk out of the box?”

Her teeth were chattering with terror. She could hardly control her

voice. There could be only one thing more dreadful than this scene—to

endure as she had been enduring. But she got some words out at last.

“If you ask me that question I must answer. But you had better not.”

His tone was like tempered steel: “I ask it.”

She raised herself in her chair, supporting her two hands on the arms,

and looked into his eyes.

“It is terrible to me to say it, but I cannot screen your mistress and

the mother to be of your child.”

There was an awful silence. His face was livid. Every particle of colour

had fallen away even from his lips. So they faced each other, the ruins

of their life between them. For a minute or more neither spoke—nor

could. Then he rallied.

“How you dare make that base and foul attack on a woman better than

yourself, God only knows. I can only suppose your mind is poisoned

through and through by the Jacobin lies. Never while I live will I

forgive you. And this to the husband to whom you owe everything!”

A sudden courage fired her at this most unjust speech.

“When my husband withdraws his love and gives it to another, what else

he has given me is worthless in my eyes. And as to stories—I go by your

own conduct. Have I had a kind word from you since you returned? Have we

lived as husband and wife? Have I not been dragged about with a woman

whose shameful past made her an unfit companion for me in any case?”

“Be silent,” he said, with low concentrated fury.

“I cannot be silent. I have always obeyed you and my one prayer is to do

so again and forever. Oh, my husband, my dear, dear husband; we were

happy once. I implore and entreat you let us be happy again. Put her

away and come back to me. She is ruining you in the eyes of men. On all

sides are stories of her worthlessness and your misplaced belief in her.

That is the cause of all the coldness that wounds you. I love you. Come

back to me and forget this most miserable thing and let us be happy

again.”

She spread her hands out in the quick gesture he knew so well. The tears

were thick in her eyes but did not overflow. Even then her reserve stood

in her way. Even to herself she seemed strained and cold. She wanted to

kneel before him and cling about him and tell him all her love, but

could not. Oh, for a word, a sign of love from him and then the frost

would break up and dissolve in a rain of passionate tears and kisses.

He turned to the window for a minute and stood looking out on the dim

lights as if taking a moment to think, and then turned back again.

“I won’t insult the woman you speak of by defending her from your vile

attacks. She is utterly beyond your malice; the truest, bravest heart in

the world. If you wanted love from me you should have met my friend as

your friend and taken her to your heart as I have. She was willing to

love you, as she wrote you more than once, but you would have nothing

but your own poor jealousy. Well, have it! Keep it! I tell you here and

now that you have so acted that one hair of her head is more to me than

all you have and are, and that though most unfortunately I must live

with you for her sake, it shall never again be as husband and wife. And

if you injure her in word or deed it shall be at your peril.”

She got up from her chair steadied by these dreadful words and stood

holding by it for a moment. Then she spoke in a choking whisper.

“What must the passion be that can make a man like you speak so to the

wife he has loved and trusted? I have no more to say. God judge between

us.”

She went quietly to the door that led to her bedroom and passed through

and he heard the key turn. If even then she had faltered and shown some

sign of weakness he might have—no, not relented, for Emma possessed him

too strongly for that!—but have thought of her more tenderly. But her

reserve stood her in ill stead, and moreover he knew he was in the

wrong, and he who has done the wrong never pardons. He would have left

the house forever then but for the injury to Emma’s reputation at that

crisis.

He sat down by the table and buried his face in his arm and thought of

Emma and yearned for her and for the comfort she only could give him.

Indeed, his love for her, misplaced, guilty, is none the less one of the

rememberable passions of the world, incalculable to himself and in its

results.

When he had a little recovered, he went out into the street and to

Piccadilly that he might judge by the light in her window whether she

had returned and was still suffering or could sleep. Up and down in the

cold rain he walked, his eyes fixed on that square of light, and at last

was rewarded more than once by seeing her figure flit across it with

long dishevelled hair, and Mrs. Cadogan evidently in attendance. That

was the best he could hope, and then he went back and crept into his

small bedroom and never closed his eyes any more than did his wife; and

so those two miserable hearts were side by side, united yet apart in a

very different suffering, for the few last nights left them.

They were not to be many. In his tactlessness and cruel persistence,

hardened by the slights shown almost everywhere to Emma, he scarcely

opened his mouth at home but to praise her. He had a faint hope of

convincing Fanny that all was innocent between them, and that therefore

the subject was not one he need avoid, but still greater was the desire

to insist on the virtues and greatness of soul which all the world must

realize. His brother Maurice came up to London and, shocked at the state

of affairs and the talk which greeted him on every side, implored Nelson

to be reconciled with his wife, even if it were only for the sake of

Lady Hamilton’s reputation, which he himself privately considered past

praying for. Nelson’s answer was an ultimatum.

“I am willing to live on friendly terms with Fanny but will never desert

a woman to whom I owe so much and insult her by what my desertion would

imply. Fanny must accept her as an honoured friend.”

And Fanny could only reply that there might be some hope if she could be

allowed to ignore the woman. That surely was not too much to ask. It was

much too much, as it proved. There was a deadlock.

It added to her agony that Nelson’s sisters, Mrs. Bolton and Mrs.

Matcham, had struck up the most cordial friendship with the woman whose

hand, as they well perceived, could dispense all the favours they could

hope from their famous brother, and the elder brother William, the needy

clergyman, was not long in imitating them. His letters to Emma,

sickening with adulation, often contained such gentle reminders as the

following:

“I am told there are two or three very old lives, prebends of

Canterbury, in the Minister’s gift, near £600 a year, and good houses.”

And then she would set Nelson, much against his taste, to beg the

authorities for favours which he hated to ask.

She was flattered in the extreme by this family recognition and too free

and easy to care to trace its wellspring very closely—all was

confidence and sympathy on that side.

The situation was impossible and the end came quickly. They were

breakfasting in Arlington Street, a friend, Nelson’s solicitor

Hazlewood, with them, and Nelson, as usual, was showing forth the

praises of “dear Lady Hamilton.” The breaking-point of Fanny’s long

suffering was reached, as often happens, by a thing she had silently

borne hundreds of times before. She rose at last and said passionately:

“I am sick, sick, of hearing of dear Lady Hamilton. Indeed you must

choose between us. I can endure no more.”

Nelson was shocked from the family vehemence into calm, for there was

finality in her face.

“Take care what you say. I love you sincerely, but I cannot forget my

obligations to Lady Hamilton or speak of her otherwise than with

affection and admiration.”

There was a dead pause, the guest staring in embarrassment at the

tablecloth, afraid to look at either.

The poor woman who had reason enough to estimate that love at its true

value, tried to speak and could not—her mind was made up, and that was

all. She tried to utter it and failed. She crept from the room and left

the house, hoping against hope, praying that the terrible break would

stir him to shame and repentance. It never did.

He went off in ghastly anxiety to Emma, afraid lest he had ruined all

their plans. But she received the news with her gayest courage.

“After all, what does it matter? I can be seen about with your sisters

now, and that’s really better in some ways for they don’t love your wife

and they’ll be furious at her walking off like that. Trust them to talk!

Besides, as my own Nelson is going afloat so soon to fight in the Baltic

’twill appear the more heartless in her. She has served our turn well

with her malicious temper. Don’t you go near her, my own dear love. I

know your kind heart, but she’s gone too far this time.”

“You think I was right?” he asked wistfully. He was wholly in her hands

now for good or ill.

“Right? What else could you do? What can any man do dealing with a nasty

evil-thinking temper like that? If a woman can’t be kind-hearted and

pleasant she deserves what she gets. Many would be jealous of her, but I

never was. I was as eager to make friends as if I had never a grudge

against her. But she never gave you a child—how can she understand? Her

love and her child were another man’s not yours!”

That went home, and then there were the fond rhapsodies without which he

could not now exist. And in the dear intimate talk of all their plans

and hopes there was not much room for thought of Fanny.

He hoisted his flag in the _San Josef_ and prepared to leave England

with an aching heart, for Emma’s hour was at hand. And here he shines

with the lustre that nothing earthly can dim. Every thought, love,

feeling of his heart was centred in that house in Piccadilly and the

event to take place there, but even that could not weigh in the scale

against his country’s need.

With Emma he concerted a plan of correspondence which might yet have

mystified the world if she had not insanely kept his letters. There was

to be a Thomson aboard his ship, a young man concerned about his wife’s

confinement in which Lady Hamilton’s goodness of heart had led her to

interest herself. She would send news to Nelson for Thomson. Nelson

would forward Thomson’s hopes and fears to her.

So, with this great fear at his heart, he sailed to fresh triumphs—the

great victory of Copenhagen—and to what might very likely be death. He

made a generous provision for Fanny and cut the bond between them,

writing with cold precision:

“I have done all in my power for you, and if I died, you will

find I have done the same. Therefore my only wish is to be left

to myself and wishing you every happiness, believe that I am

your affectionate Nelson and Bronte.”

She endorsed it:

“This is my Lord Nelson’s letter of dismissal which so

astonished me that I immediately sent it to Mr. Maurice Nelson,

who was sincerely attached to me, for his advice. He desired me

not to take the least notice of it, as his brother seemed to

have forgotten himself.”

Yet she still waited on in hope never to be fulfilled. To Emma he wrote

passionately, in almost frenzied anxiety for her health, but in their

secret code.

“Pray tell Mrs. Thomson her kind friend is very uneasy about her

and prays most fervently for her safety, and he says he can only

depend on your goodness. May the Heavens bless and protect my

dearest friend and give her every comfort this world can afford

is the sincerest prayer of your faithful and affectionate Nelson

and Bronte.”

On the twenty-ninth of January his daughter Horatia was born, incredibly

under the roof of Sir William in Piccadilly. With Mrs. Cadogan’s

connivance all was kept secret, though it would be difficult to guess

how far Sir William himself was blinded or preferred to be. Within a

week the child was at nurse in a somewhat obscure London street and in

another fortnight, Emma, “recovered from one of her old Neapolitan

attacks,” was shining in society again—such society as accepted her.

As for Nelson; the family excitability combined with his own feelings

drove him almost insane. “I believe,” he wrote to Emma, “that dear Mrs.

Thomson’s friend will go mad with joy. He cries, prays, and performs all

sorts of tricks, yet dare not show all or any of his feelings, but he

has only me to consult with. He swears he will drink your health this

day in a bumper, and damn me if I don’t join him. I cannot write, I am

so agitated by this young man at my elbow. I believe he is foolish. He

does nothing but rave about you and her. I own I participate in his joy

and cannot write anything.”

Ah, what chance had Fanny against that new passion of fatherhood! None.

If he could ever have forgotten Emma there was now this living bond

between them, flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone. She must be

christened Horatia. She must be provided for, loved, guarded. Nothing

was too much for this treasure, and the greater treasure to whom he owed

her. It is incredible—the passion of this man for such a woman. Not

sensual passion only, though that had its share, but an idealization

which almost makes one doubt between the woman as he saw her and the

woman she really was. And yet—only the Power to whom the secrets of all

hearts are known can say which is the right estimate, the lover’s or the

world’s.

Not even the famous letters of his great antagonist—Napoleon’s to

Josephine—can equal the outpourings of Nelson, held at sea by his equal

devotion to England, but tortured by Emma’s beauty and the fear (which

it is instructive to note) of her least infidelity.

The dissolute Prince of Wales invited himself to Sir William’s house to

hear the enchanting Emma sing with the famous Banti, and Sir William,

with an eye on the governorship of Malta, was most anxious to oblige

him. Nelson was driven almost mad at the bare thought of it. A shrieking

self-torture runs through every word he wrote:

“Do not sit long at table. Good God! He will be next you and

telling you soft things. If he does, tell it out at table and

turn him out of the house. O God, that I was dead. I am gone

almost mad, but you cannot help it. His words are so charming

that I am told no person can withstand them. If I had been worth

ten millions I would have betted every farthing that you would

not have gone into the house knowing he was there, and if you

did, which I would not have believed, that you would have sent

him a proper message by Sir William and sent him to hell. Hush,

hush, my poor heart, keep in my breast. Emma is true. They say

he sings well. I have eat nothing but a little rice and drank

water. But forgive me. I know my Emma, and don’t forget you had

once a Nelson, a friend, a dear friend, but alas! he has his

misfortunes. He has lost the best, his only friend, his only

love. Don’t forget him, poor fellow. He is honest. Oh, I could

thunder and strike dead with my lightning. I dreamt it last

night, my Emma.”

And so on through many pages—a cruel heart-piercing mixture of Lear and

Ophelia and as mad as either.

“Do not let him come downstairs with you, or hand you up!

Perhaps my head was a little affected. No wonder, it was such an

unexpected, such a knock-down blow, such a death.”

Was this happiness? Was it ever happiness? That question may well be

asked but hardly answered. He trembled always on the edge of terrors of

one sort or another. His own child he could but see by stealth, his

“wife in the eyes of God” was the wife of another—a man bound to him by

closest, most trusting ties of friendship. He was reduced to counting on

that man’s death and hoping for it—“When your uncle [Sir William]

dies”—then all would be well. And yet not even then. There was his

wife, and she in her dumb suffering must be vilified as a hard

self-seeking woman that the beloved Emma might be justified, and his

passion for her. And when all this failed to convince his own unhappy

soul, then God must be called to justify him—God in whose eyes love is

all. He must pity and understand what to human eyes must appear hideous.

He threw himself on the Divine sympathy, knowing there could be none on

earth for a fall so complicated.

But amid all these griefs there stood out starry clear one joy unmixed

and perfect—England. He had served her as none other, and the time was

not past. He could serve her again—his frail breast her bulwark in the

terrible days he foresaw—and before God and man that duty should be

flawlessly done. There was his reparation, if such were needed. That

should uplift his name to the snowy heights of honour and Emma’s shine

with it as his inspiration. He fought for her and for himself in every

blow he struck for the country he loved as well as he loved her—or

better.

So he sailed sorrowful, but with a great hope before him, to the north.

And Frances Nelson made once more a simple dignified appeal for

reconciliation; but Emma was omnipotent. It was not even answered. At

all events, all hope was over when he returned from Copenhagen, for

Emma, with his commission, had bought the charming house of Merton Place

in Surrey which he was henceforth to share by a most extraordinary

arrangement with the Hamiltons.

Emma’s way was growing clear before her, and in her own mind there was

now no doubt as to the future. Sir William’s life could not be long. He

had told her so himself and the doctors confirmed it, and the duty, fast

growing irksome, of pretending to place his interests before Nelson

could not trouble her much longer. She would do her utmost for him while

he lasted. Her natural good-nature prompted her there and was backed by

the motive of self-interest, if it needed backing, for on his will much

might depend. Nelson was far from rich and the allowance he felt

compelled to make his wife, sorely and openly grudged by Emma, made her

the more anxious about her own resources. With two incomes at her

disposal and her own bent that way, she had grown terribly extravagant.

Though Merton might please Nelson and Sir William, London pleased her,

and not for a moment would she hear of surrendering the house in

Piccadilly and its gaieties. Both there and at Merton she was surrounded

by the Bohemian and masculine society which was nearly all that her

reputation left her with the exception of Nelson’s sisters and their

families; and in such an environment all that Greville had checked in

her character reappeared now and with the added force of long

repression. Her easy manner was now familiarity, her outbursts of temper

were almost unbearable, her very kindness affronted. She prejudiced

Nelson at every turn against his wife—“Tom Tit,” as she nicknamed

her—and she tossed over the poor woman’s wardrobe which Nelson had

commissioned her (of all people!) to pack and return. She never wearied

of cruel jokes about her with his sisters, who flattered her by joining

in her humour. She wrote to one of them:

“Tom Tit is at Brighton. She did not come nor did he go. Jove

[Nelson], for he is quite a Jove, knows better than that! It is

such a pain to part with dear friends and you and I liked each

other from the moment we met; our souls were congenial. Not so

with Tom Tit, for _there_ was an antipathy not to be described!

Tom Tit does not come to town. She offered to go down but was

refused, she only wanted to go to do mischief to all the great

Jove’s relations. ’Tis now shown, all her ill treatment and bad

heart. Jove has found it out.”

And the _cara amica_ wrote back:

“I saw Tom Tit yesterday in her carriage at the next door come

to take Lady Charlotte Drummond out with her. Had I only seen

her hands spreading about I should have known her.”

Yes; it was not only Emma who had so much taste and all of it so bad.

With the exception of his old father most of the Nelsons might have come

under that superlative Grevillian censure so far as their treatment of

Frances Nelson was concerned. Yet humanity is a mixed warp and woof, and

in many ways Emma kept her kind heart. Do we ever change from our birth

endowments, and as life wanes is it not a progressive dissolution into

the original elements? The fine lady of Naples was rapidly degenerating

into the hoyden of Up Park, only coarser, more florid, more spendthrift

in money as well as emotions. But Nelson could not see it. She was his

Divine Lady to the last, as she was Romney’s.

Romney! She made the pilgrimage to Hampstead to see him. A sad

pilgrimage. She missed the old studio in Cavendish Square. It was a

villa-looking house with a neglected garden about it, a few sodden

lilacs and grass-grown flower-beds, and when she entered unannounced

they stared at each other for a moment in silence. He was stooped and

old and dejected. A fog of melancholia clung about him, which was never

to lift again. He looked at her with dull eyes as she unloosed her

costly pelisse and sat down beside him and took his hands, all

cordiality.

“You were once Emma,” he muttered, “once Emma! My God, how beautiful you

were! I shall never paint you more. No—no. It’s all over.”

“But, my dear sir, you remember me. You don’t think me changed!” she

pleaded. Indeed she knew herself she was changed. Her glass told her

that if Nelson did not. Something of the young glow was gone with youth.

But he only shook his head.

“You were once Emma. It’s all, all over,” he replied, and she could get

no more than that. She left him, herself half bewildered with the

passing of things. Her only remedy for care was gaiety, incessant noisy

gaiety. Let their old acquaintance, Lord Minto, describe the life at

Merton when Nelson returned:

“The whole establishment and way of life is such as to make one angry as

well as melancholy. I do not think myself obliged to quarrel with him

for his weakness, though nothing shall ever induce me to give the

smallest countenance to Lady Hamilton. She looks eventually to the

chance of marriage. She is in high looks, but more immense than ever.

She goes on cramming Nelson with trowelfuls of flattery, which he goes

on taking quietly as a child does pap. The love she makes to him is not

only ridiculous but disgusting. Not only the rooms, but the whole house,

staircase and all, are covered with pictures of her and him, and

representations of his naval actions—an excess of vanity which

counteracts its own subject. Braham, the celebrated Jew singer,

performed with Lady H. She is horrid, but he entertained me.”

Sir William was worn out with the riot. He took an opportunity to

complain to the cool Greville on meeting him in London.

“I do assure you it is wearing me to the grave,” he sighed, in reply to

Greville’s look of concern. “It is really but reasonable to hope for

peace, having fagged all my life, but never a chance of it do I get.”

“But surely, my dear Hamilton, you can point this out, you can insist!”

“With Emma? Indeed if you will recall the past you will know better. My

interests are always postponed to His Lordship’s. Not that I think he

likes it any better than myself, but he is subservient to all her whims.

Little could I foresee all this the day he first visited us in Naples!

If the house were my own I might make some stand. As it is, it is not

mine, and I do assure you, money flows away like water.”

Greville’s face was grave indeed at this admission. He had guessed it

must be so, but to hear the fact was a serious matter. That ill-advised

recommendation of Emma to his uncle was coming home to him now in ways

he had little dreamt of in the happy freedom of getting rid of her

without cost so long ago.

“I think you should remonstrate. I do indeed. It pains me, my dear

Hamilton, it pains me seriously to see you treated so unwarrantably. I

am all for a remonstrance.”

“Will you believe it, Greville,” says Sir William, weakly querulous,

“that she laid a paper from her banker Coutts on my table yesterday,

intimating that Her Ladyship’s balance was now twelve shillings!”

“It cannot be borne. It cannot indeed!” cries Greville, stirred into

real warmth. “You must speak strongly, finally. You will be ruined, my

dear Hamilton, unless you do.”

“I can’t speak and I won’t,” says Sir William. “Her temper—you knew it

of old.”

“Then you shall write to her. Indeed you must.”

That too appeared an insuperable difficulty until Greville offered his

assistance in composing a letter.

With their heads together they compounded it, Greville’s mind returning

by devious ways to Up Park and the misfortune of ever showing compassion

to undeserving strangers, especially young women of uncertain character.

It was strongly borne in upon him now.

“I by no means wish to live in solitary retreat [it ran] but to

have seldom less than twelve or fourteen at table, and those

varying continually, is coming back to what was become so

irksome to me in Italy during the latter years. I have no

complaint to make, but I feel that the whole attention of my

wife is given to Lord N. and his interest at Merton. I well know

the purity of Lord N.’s friendship, and I know how very

uncomfortable it would make his Lordship if a separation should

take place and am therefore determined to do all in my power to

prevent such an extremity” [“That will alarm her!” said

Greville, pausing. “We can scarcely put that too strongly.”]

“which [he continued] would be detrimental to all parties but

would be more sensibly felt by our dear friend than by us.

Provided our expenses in housekeeping do not increase beyond

measure I am willing to go on upon our present footing. But I am

fully determined not to have more of the very silly altercations

that happen but too often between us and embitter the present

moments. If really one cannot live comfortably together a wise

and well-concerted separation is preferable, but I think,

considering the probability of my not troubling any party long

in this world, the best for us all would be to bear those ills

we know of.”

This also was Emma’s opinion on receiving the letter and discussing it

with Nelson, and a little more peace was accorded the old man now so

near his end. He died in April, 1803, in the presence of Emma and

Nelson, and she immediately made the sacrifice of cutting off her

beautiful hair and wearing it à la Titus in the fashionable mourning

style of the period draped with a huge black veil which served a few

months later for the renewed Attitudes.

In so far as the black veil represented mourning there was still more

occasion for it when Sir William’s will was read, and her attitude then

might very naturally be one of dejection. Greville had conquered. An

annuity of £800 a year, to include provision for her mother, was all

that was left for his “dear wife Emma.” An enamel of Emma to Nelson, and

Greville as residuary legatee. And eight hundred pounds a year to Emma

now was less than eight hundred pence would have been in the days of

Edgware Row.

CHAPTER XXVII

SUNSET

THE Immortals, the lesser gods, watch their prey at leisure and, one

would say, with ironic amusement. The angels may weep but it is certain

they laugh.

Emma’s plans were nearing fruition, and, again granting the initial

error, were they so unnatural? Her husband was gone; that chapter

finally closed; and every hope for the future grew nearer and more

dazzling. If any untoward fate were to remove Tom Tit, she herself would

succeed her and life at Merton and in London be all her heart’s desire

with Nelson and the little “adopted” Horatia, and, if Lady Nelson

unkindly persisted in living, there was at the worst the sunny dukedom

of Bronte in lovely Sicily; and there she knew it had long been Nelson’s

wish to retire and live in peace among his own vineyards with his Santa

Emma and his Horatia. The simple kindly people there would take them

unquestioning. Marie Caroline could not do less than spread a protecting

wing over them and life might drift away like a dream and Nelson be

blessed as he never had been blessed yet. Of course, London would be her

choice, with the opera singers coming and going, and the gay old Duke of

Queensberry who was so much attached to her that she had even visions of

a legacy there also if the friendship continued. But after all, the old

Castello of Maniace in Bronte could be filled with guests, and Italy had

its pleasures and—many dimly agreeable things ran through her brain in

those days of freedom. She was really not pinched for money at the

moment. Nelson allowed her £100 a month for the housekeeping at Merton,

and with that and Sir William’s annuity she might have managed well but

for—a large but—her own incorrigible extravagance and incapacity for

saying no either to herself or to any one else. How could she do without

a little house in London?—and there was a charming one in a charming

neighbourhood, Clarges Street, out of Piccadilly. She must have that.

And the expenses would be smaller at Merton because the French were at

their old game and Nelson was again ordered to sea—to the

Mediterranean, to Naples, where he would see her adored Marie Caroline

and remind her of her Emma; for indeed it appeared as if that ungrateful

Majesty were forgetting her steadily but surely. Possibly the Queen felt

that her friend’s services had been well paid with £30,000 worth of

diamonds and other Royal gifts and such Royal condescensions as fall to

the lot of few blacksmiths’ daughters.

Yes, it all promised exceedingly well, and Emma found her widow’s cap,

if so the black veil could be described, “le vrai bonnet de la liberté.”

Greville was troublesome certainly. He was cold and sharp. He no longer

cared to hide his dislike and he hurried her out of the Piccadilly house

in a way which any self-respecting widow would resent. Still, she

remembered the past with a certain tenderness, and he had had his uses.

The “little Emma,” now a young woman, had been edged off to a situation

abroad without any certain knowledge as to her parentage, and was heard

of no more. He might be useful also in her endless petitions to the

Government for a pension as a reward for her own services in the matter

of victualling the British Fleet before the Battle of the Nile. But that

unfortunately fell flat. There was a prejudice against her in high

places which she could never understand. Against Nelson also, though he

was the darling of the people—who had alas! no pensions to bestow. But

he would win fresh honours, prize money, rewards, in this commission and

then all would be well.

His love letters were always as passionate as the first he had ever

written her. He would scarcely allow himself any recreation ashore in

the lovely Mediterranean lands lest she should be jealous of the

dark-eyed signoras. She had no anxieties there. Indeed, she might enjoy

herself in perfect security in London with old Q. (as they called him)

and his revellers, and Emma was the first and gayest of them all. She

had her admirers, and Nelson wrote, with a jest which stings a little:

“Never mind the great Bashaw at the Priory. He be damned! If he

was single and had a mind to marry you he could only make you a

Marchioness but, as he is situated and I situated, I can make

you a Duchess, and, if it pleases God, that time may

arrive—Amen, Amen!”

An odd invocation, but cheering to Emma.

In the January of that year Nelson’s second daughter was born—another

“little Emma,” for, all unknowing of the first, that name commended

itself to him. Her life, however, was brief, and the charming mother

resumed her gaieties untrammelled. With this, and the threatening of

blindness, he had enough to trouble him on his apparently hopeless quest

of the French Fleet, and never was his triumphant greatness in public

affairs better shown than in that long and dogged patience. He never

went ashore from June, 1803, until July, 1805. All his thoughts were

concentrated on Emma and on the French Fleet, and in truth they meant

the same thing for without the conquest of the one he could not hope to

see the other, so firmly were the country’s eyes fixed on him. It is a

relief to turn from that hectic life of Emma’s, with its noisy

assumption and petty cruelties to the deserted wife, to the pure

austerity of his life on the high seas. Gradually, the man was escaping

from her clutch, resolving, as a cloud does in approaching the sun, into

pure glory. There is a clear wind blowing now, the wind of the great

oceans and the noble deeds of men. Who can read the account of that long

passionate hope-deferred chase without a pang of sympathy? Let us turn

to it.

I who write have heard the tale of it as a child from an old, old man of

my own blood, who was serving as a young midshipman in the gallant

Captain Parker’s _Amazon_—Parker, a nephew of the great Lord St.

Vincent, Nelson’s teacher and friend. Who could forget that gallant

story who has heard it from the lips of one who shared it all? Nelson,

misled by a false report that Villeneuve, the French Admiral, was about

to attack the West Indies, made what speed he might for the Gulf of

Para. Ten sail of the line pursuing eighteen. At Barbados he was

reinforced by two line of battleships, and thence made what speed he

could for Trinidad.

Reaching the Gulf of Para, he summoned his captains on board the

_Victory_, and my relative accompanied Captain Parker as midshipman of

his boat, carrying some official papers with them with which he followed

him to the poop. The officers gathered about Nelson, and pointing in the

direction of the island, he said:

“The French Fleet is probably there. They have eighteen sail of

the line. The _Victory_ will take three. _Canopus_, _Spartiate_

and _Belleisle_ will take two each, and the rest of you, one

apiece. Now, gentlemen, the fleets are equal.”

Yet this was no foolhardiness in spite of its gallantry, for, ship for

ship, Nelson’s fleet was more equal to Villeneuve’s than the one which

he commanded at the Nile had been to that of Bruey’s. There was the

flash in Nelson, but there was also the thunder to back it. That must

never be forgotten.

And later, off Toulon, came the same Parker’s famous dash for Lisbon in

the _Amazon_, under Nelson’s orders to avoid Sir John Orde, the Admiral,

who, according to the Nelsonic notion, was robbing him of his frigates

and too jealously guarding the bounds of his own station to the west.

Parker was to avoid his ships like the devil!

“And if it comes to a court martial,” says Nelson with humour in his

face, “you shall not be broke though Sir John Orde is my senior officer.

I will stand by you. Take your orders and good-bye. And remember,

Parker, if you can’t weather that fellow, I shall think you have not a

drop of your old uncle’s blood in your veins!”

Off and away went Parker burning with zeal, and as he passed Spartel, lo

and behold Sir John Orde’s squadron taking it easy in the moonlight!

Parker might have slipped past, but, alas, an outlying frigate,

lynx-eyed, commanded by “little good Captain Hoste,” who had borne

Nelson’s despatches to Naples after the Battle of the Nile, caught sight

of the _Amazon_ lying low and gave chase and had the heels of her.

Aboard came Hoste, brimming with Orde’s jealous orders that no ship

should proceed to the westward. Parker buttonholed him in his cabin.

“Captain Hoste, I believe you owe all your advancement in the

service to my uncle Lord St. Vincent and to Lord Nelson. I am

avoiding Sir John Orde’s squadron by desire of Lord Nelson. I

must go on.”

Hoste stood dumb and doubting. Parker, being his senior, he could not

delay him on his own authority, and with Nelson behind him—! Parker saw

the doubt and continued: “After all, would it not be better if you were

not to meet the _Amazon_ to-night, Captain Hoste?” Silence. Hoste went

quietly over the side and back to his own ship in the moonlight. He had

not met the _Amazon_. Mahan tells this story finely, but it is something

to have heard of the Villeneuve chase from a man who took part in it.

It would be a gallant tale to write the incidents of that long cruise

with its seemingly unsuccessful ending. Yet not unsuccessful, for it

prepared and paved the way for the struggle of giants to follow, and the

English people knew it and hailed him as the conqueror he was when he

returned for his brief three weeks’ respite to England before the last

and greatest struggle of Trafalgar.

Portsmouth, London, surged about him. What did Lady Hamilton or anything

matter where their hero, their darling, was concerned?

“I met Nelson in a mob at Piccadilly!” said Minto, “and got hold of his

arm, so that I was mobbed too. It is really quite affecting to see the

wonder and admiration and love and respect of the whole world. It is

beyond anything represented in a play or in a poem of fame.”

Beyond everything. The instinct was true, was right. Because he had not

the evil skill to hide that one fall in his great life as a wickeder man

would have done with easy hypocrisy, was he—their Nelson—to be

scorned? God forbid, they thought and said. But, oh—but, oh, that it

had been for a worthier woman! The inadequacy of the divinity to the

sacrifice is what breaks the heart in this story. Yet be she what she

might, one is glad to remember that those three weeks at Merton were

happy. His old father had gone to his reward, but the rest of the family

clustered about him, his little Horatia there and Emma radiating

sunshine. Even Minto, who could not abide her, owns that. “She is a

clever being after all; the passion is as hot as ever.” Yes, and a

driving force that neither Minto nor any other could estimate—a passion

to be justified before earth and Heaven.

He knew that any moment might part them—he savoured every instant as

its sweetness touched his lips. And yet, almost before it seemed

possible, the call came. Could he, the beloved and trusted of the whole

nation, hesitate, when it was known that the French Fleet had been seen

off Cadiz? Not he. Emma was swooning and weeping all over the dinner

table, according to Minto. Nelson’s passion was burning in a clear white

flame that admitted of no outward expression of emotion. His farewell to

her no human eye saw, but by the little Horatia’s bed he knelt and

prayed while she slept. She it was who sanctified that bond to

him—God’s blessing made visible in a little child.

Death was approaching and he knew it, and in the solemn twilight of that

great presence all his feelings took on a majesty far removed from the

tumult of days not long gone by. He wrote in his intimate journal:

“At 10.30 drove from dear, dear Merton where I left all which I

hold dear in this world to go and serve my King and country. May

the great God whom I adore enable me to fulfil the expectations

of my country; and if it is His good pleasure that I should

return, my thanks will never cease being offered up to the

Throne of His Mercy. If it is His good Providence to cut short

my days upon earth, I bow with the greatest submission, relying

that Pie will protect those so dear to me that I may leave

behind. His will be done.” He closed with a triple Amen.

So Emma, leaning from the window, choked with sobs, saw the night enfold

him in its darkness. He was but forty-seven—so much before him yet! So

much to hope and to do. In that moment surely nothing was left of her

but what was purely womanly, though her easy tears dried soon.

He joined the _Victory_ elate but calm. The Admiralty, realizing the

battle of the giants to be, had invited him to name his own officers.

What! And cast a slur on those he might not choose? That would not be

Nelson? He replied:

“Choose yourselves, my Lords. The same spirit actuates the whole

profession. You cannot choose wrong.” Nor could they. He and the nation

alike owned it. The Fleet owned it. They knew who led them, and when the

signal flew from masthead to masthead from the watchful inshore frigates

to Nelson fifty miles at sea off Spartel, “The enemy are coming out of

port,” there was not a heart but beat steadily with a calm confidence in

the man set over them not only by the Admiralty but by the Almighty.

Once more and for the last time Nelson confronted Napoleon in the person

of his combined fleets of France and Spain.

The story of Trafalgar is not one for the pen of a romancer, for the

more simply the stern and glorious truth is told, the more it raises the

human imagination to its own great heights. Yet certain pictures arise

and wring the soul with their humanity. And these may be spoken of, for

the feet of the true Romance tread near indeed to God.

Nelson, writing the famous codicil to his will in which he committed

Emma and his child as a sacred trust to the nation, causing its

attestation by the signatures of his two old friends Blackwood and

Hardy, and setting beneath this the solemn sentence, “In sight of the

combined fleets of France and Spain, distant about ten miles.”

Nelson watching the removal of the bulkheads of his cabin for action

and, as they displaced her picture, bidding them: “Take care of my

guardian angel.”

An officer, hastening to speak to him with a petition for a post of

danger and glory, but halting, seeing the Admiral on his knees in the

dismantled cabin, writing—his last words, his last prayer—and

withdrawing in a reverence that would not break his solemn communion.

“May the great God whom I worship grant to my country and for

the benefit of Europe in general a great and glorious victory

and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it, and may humanity

after victory be the predominant feature in the British Fleet.

For myself individually I commit my life to Him who made me, and

may His blessing light on my endeavours for serving my country

faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is

entrusted to me to defend.”

And again the triple Amen. And so he went on deck.

The glorious signal of England’s certain expectation from her sons, the

stately advance of the fleets into action, Collingwood’s _Royal

Sovereign_ leading, as all the ships of the three nations to be engaged

chivalrously and by one impulse hoisted their flags in haughty and

dignified salute. What a sight to linger forever in the world’s memory!

Then Nelson flew the signal for close action and turned to

Blackwood—“Now I can do no more. We must trust to the great Disposer of

Events.” Blackwood, returning to his ship, took his hand. “God bless

you, Blackwood,” he said, “I shall never speak to you again.” And even

as Blackwood left the _Victory_ the first shot tore through her

maintopgallant sail, and the battle was begun.

These are the pictures that rise amid the hell of flame and smoke. So,

in great moments when the littleness of the vanishing world is apparent,

men fling themselves on the Unseen, the Mighty, surrounding us as the

unplumbed sea girdles the earth. And through these, at last, when he

lay, wounded to death, Nelson attained to look upon the beginnings of

peace.

War thundered about him—“Oh, Victory, Victory, how you distract my poor

brain”—and yet, through the roar of the guns, a stealing quiet can be

discerned.

It was Victory in another sense also—triumph that he must carry with

him for he could not live to taste it. Hardy, now in command, hurrying

from the bloody deck, gave him the glad news of victory almost beyond

hope, eventual ruin to Napoleon and safety to England. He heard it and

rejoiced; then, gasping:

“Take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy. Take care of poor Lady

Hamilton.”

And then, in the strange loneliness of death, like a child, the great

Admiral said: “Kiss me, Hardy”—the last token of human love, vanishing,

vanishing in the Eternal. And Hardy stooped and kissed him and once more

took his station on deck, never again to meet his friend in life.

He was sinking rapidly now. To the chaplain: “I have _not_ been a

_great_ sinner—” and after a short pause, “_Remember._ I leave Lady

Hamilton and my daughter as a legacy to my country. Never forget

Horatia.”

Nearer, nearer, came the end, and at last even those beloved names faded

and passed from the mirror of his mind and were gone, and only the two

which were one remained, and the man, bending above him to lose nothing,

heard only “God and my Country,” as he passed away into the inmost of

his country’s love and remembrance, and higher—higher.

After that scene and when the threads must be gathered up, it is surely

impossible to write anything condemnatory or slighting of the beautiful

woman whom such a man had loved. With him her romance ended, and she

became a tragic triviality. Let others follow her sinking star through

all its sorrowful clouding—I cannot.

For Nelson, Trafalgar was the crowning mercy, the glorious reward of a

life of self-devotion scarcely to be paralleled. Had he lived, it is

said that blindness must have been his fate, and perhaps a yet more

cruel clear-sightedness where he might well have prayed to be blind

forever, for she had been tested by her attitude to his wife and had

failed—a tragic failure that must have marred all their future. But he

died with his faith unbroken.

Surely his great belief uplifts her and, washing all the stains away,

leaves her fair face pure beauty in our memory, as Romney, who also

loved her, has given it to us forever. To whom little is given, of them

shall little be required, and she had little enough in her young days

when character is unalterably moulded for life.

As for judgment on him—Heaven forbid! The cruelty to his wife is

patent, but not the circumstances which led up to it. Nor her

compensations. It was not all loss. If she had ever envied Emma her

great husband’s love, Emma had cause to envy her also.

When the day of their final separation came, this was Nelson’s last

farewell to his wife: “I call God to witness there is nothing in you or

your conduct I wish otherwise.” Let that be set against the bitternesses

with which the other influence inspired his generous heart.

I stood by her tomb in Littleham Churchyard, Devon, not many years ago

and read its proud legend: “Frances, Viscountess Nelson, Duchess of

Bronte.” So she bore his name unsullied to the grave. She lived her days

in peace in the family of her son, tenderly cared for by those who loved

her. Here is her portrait by one who knew her well: “If mildness,

forbearance and indulgence to the weaknesses of human nature could have

availed her, her fate might have been very different. No reproach ever

passed her lips. You should know the worth of her who has been so often

misrepresented from the wish of many to cast the blame anywhere but on

him who was so deservedly dear to the nation.”

Deservedly dear indeed, and most dear to her also. Many waters cannot

quench love. Her grandchild remembered and recorded how she would take

her husband’s miniature from a preciously treasured casket and kiss it

and lay it back, and how in her low voice she would say: “You too,

little Fan, may one day know what it is to have a broken heart,” with

the gentle sweetness of nature that lived in the child’s memory. This

lady, too, had had her battle and had conquered.

What room is there for judgment? These things are beyond us. There was

gold in Emma also, with all her evil. Her devotion to her poor

lowly-born old mother, unfaltering in riches and poverty, is a flower

that time cannot wither, and there was the quick passion for courage and

high deeds, and the generous hand in giving. England owes her a debt for

the beacon fire of sympathy which lit Nelson’s way across stormy seas—a

debt she never paid, but should not forget. There is a sullied splendour

about the woman which makes her rememberable where women greater and

better are forgotten, a warm humanity, which pleads for her eternally

and must until Nelson’s own name is drifted over with the remorseless

sands of time.

If it is possible to imagine some world where love in pure essence

seeking its source immortal is one, it may be believed that the love of

these two women, so strangely different in character and circumstances,

may, at last united, heal his wounds and draw him forever to the heart

of the Beautiful made manifest in each of them. For Love is eternal, and

who shall judge his way in the deep waters?

THE END

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple

spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors

occur.

A cover was created for this eBook and is placed in the public domain.