CHAPTER XXI
THE GARDEN OF ARMIDA
IN those days every interest of Naples centred on the sea and the news it might bring. The French were still occupying the republic they had made of Rome and Roman territory and therefore the menace, broken on the sea, was still very near them by land. But what did that count in the whirlwind of praise and admiration they were preparing for the coming of Nelson? He who had performed miracles could perform yet another.
Emma fanned the flame with all her power, and her power was not small. Sir William was ill and tired with anxiety. He could rise to the occasion on an emergency, but more and more the reins of power dropped from aging hands and as they dropped she gathered them up, silently, skilfully, and Nelson knew—and not Nelson only—that she was virtually the British Ambassador in Naples. An amazing position for a beautiful woman of thirty-three even if her antecedents had been those of one of the English governing families, but almost terrifying when her life and misfortunes are considered. And the more so because the French Jacobins were interested in discovering any blot on the scutcheon of their inveterate enemy. Their agents in London searched out every detail of her life. Nothing was unknown to them, and then they set to work to embellish what needed no embellishment. “The Neapolitan Messalina” they called her and defeated their own object except in France, for even the most censorious knew that she had been a stainless wife to Sir William; never a breath to the contrary had sullied her. Indeed, her faith to him, her deep enthralling gratitude for the great gifts he had given, became her conscience, and not Lucretia herself was more circumspect than Emma.
Perhaps she was not very severely tempted. There is a modern writer who holds that there is no such thing as temptation in the usual sense of the word, that when two alternatives are presented the mental struggle is merely one of discrimination on grounds low or high according to the mental status of the man, and that invariably he succumbs to the delight that draws him most strongly, and can do no otherwise. St. Augustine, skilled in the windings of the human heart, declares that “we needs must follow what most delights us.” It may be a fatal passion wrestling with the longing for the pure heart, the position that cannot be impugned, the answer of what is called a clear conscience, but that the line of least resistance must and will be followed is as certain as that night follows day.
To Emma, besieged by many lovers, vain and light-hearted, in love with success and admiration, there had been many so-called temptations since the happy day which made her Lady Hamilton. She trifled with them, laughed and passed on, for she discriminated. It might be pleasant to have princes sighing at her feet, but she had tasted the insecurities of vice and was far more passionately tempted by her great position and the power, the enlarged stage it gave her. She had but to remember how easily the bonds of mere passion are broken and the woman always the scapegoat, to cling with all the rigidity of virtue to her honours.
And there was gratitude to Sir William, truly and deeply felt, to set side by side with the knowledge that no other man in the world could give her what he gave—the chance to distinguish herself in the theatre of Europe. In other words, she had never as yet been tempted. She had never seen anything she could for one moment weigh against all she held in the hollow of her hand.
As to Nelson, commingled with his burning gratitude for her help, and the strange and shining glamour that surrounded her in his soul, his heart was faithful to his Fanny. He was the child of the parsonage, trained to habits of prayer and reference of his daily concerns to God—except, indeed, when matters went very contrary with him, and a good round oath or two would speed the business; but then God would not be hard upon a sorely tried seaman who admitted with contrition that he was in the wrong, and who did his utmost for a country whose cause was God’s.
Bad men were faithless to their wives. He had kept his eyes open in foreign ports and knew, and he was aware that this was a subtle poison which sapped the character in subtle ways. He was not analytic by any means, and could have given no reason for it, but knew very well he would sooner have his clean-living Troubridge or Collingwood beside him when the French were in the offing than a ladies’ man like X or Y with a wife in every port. The two kinds of stability went together and he could not tell why. He despised the lax livers. And since his country and the service came first with him, he also had had no difficulty in discrimination between idle passion and duty.
So with blare of trumpet and beat of drum and flutter of flags against blue skies, the battered, victorious Fleet came slowly up by Capri on a cloudless September day, and Emma, conscious of personal glories past and to be which fused and melted in the rays of Nelson’s halo, prepared herself for the greatest day of her experience. The Queen was ill, worn out with joy and grief, and the Ambassadress would be the chief lady, even surpassing in interest the Crown Princess Clementine. The long-suffering Teresa was wild with excitement. Excellenza must shine, must eclipse all others on this day when the Great Admiral, the saviour of Italy, was coming to receive her homage. A dress had been specially prepared; white, of course; with the pale blue sash which Emma still preferred to all else, and across the shoulder and breast a broad ribbon like that of the Bath with the words “Nelson of the Nile” embroidered in bullion. Red, white and blue, the onlookers shall observe! About her neck hung his miniature set in small pearls and painted by the artistic Miss Cornelia Knight, acting at this time almost as her informal secretary. She was “alla Nelson” as she phrased it, from head to rosetted shoes.
When she descended to the carriage that was to take them to the Royal yacht, Sir William looked at her with pride and pleasure. His fondness was taking on the tone of a father to a favourite daughter as he aged and she blossomed.
“I never saw you look better, Emma mia. Now spare yourself a little, I entreat you. It will be a day of great emotions, and you know how these excitements try you.”
He might well say that. A more highly strung, emotional woman never breathed, and her nights had been restless and disturbed for weeks owing to the troubles brewing in the city and fomented by the French Jacobins who came and went. The Queen also lingered during the hot weather at her Palace of Caserta and it was a long and weary way for the necessary conferences. She promised, to quiet the kind old man, and they drove down to the sea.
The King was waiting to hand the Ambassadress to the yacht. It was her day, every one admitted that, and by a graceful waiving of precedence she was led on board even before the young wife of the Heir Apparent, the Princess Clementine, who drew back and refused to stir a step until Emma had been escorted. It never even flashed across her mind how strange are the turns of Fortune’s wheel, as curtseying she obeyed the very great young lady. Yet it might have done, for that very morning’s mail had brought her a pompous, somewhat too respectful letter from—whom?—Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh of Up Park, congratulating her as the wife of England’s representative on “the glorious victory of our immortal Nelson” and her share in it, which had flown, magnified by millions of tongues, back to England.
It was in bad taste in spite of all its homage, and a more sensitive woman would have winced under it, but not Emma. It enchanted her that he should know her triumph, should know he had cast her out not to infamy and poverty, but to glory and honour beyond all his imaginings. He, a man, with money and position, had made nothing of his life (she knew of his marriage from Greville), he was one of the mere public. She, a woman and cruelly handicapped, sat in the seats of the mighty, and at the helm of great events. She showed it to Sir William, from whom she had no secrets, and told him she had half a mind to answer it. He drily recommended her to throw it in the fire and think of it no more.
Privately, she laughed to herself at the King’s forced gaiety as he led her on board. He tried for a holiday face and with poor success for he was still in the hands of the Anglophobe party and she knew it, and he knew she did. But the day was glorious, the bunting a-flutter and the eyes of Europe on Naples. What did it matter?
Emblems of victory flew from each mast of the Royal yacht; the awnings glittered like Cleopatra’s barge. Lady Hamilton, reclining in the stern, might have passed for the lovely Egyptian about to meet Mark Antony. Music winged their way, triumphal odes composed by Cimarosa—every boat that followed was vocal. Naples afloat to greet her Liberator.
And thus they approached the Fleet—dark, war-worn, huge—lying at anchor off Capri. Even the music and shouting were stilled for a moment as they drew near that tremendous spectacle and saw the wounds that war had made in those stern sides. France had left her mark deep on them: shot-marked, splintered, jury masts rigged where the others had fallen, they clustered together, formidable still, but wearied, wearied. There is no creation of man which so shares and reflects his emotions as a ship, and these were neither rejoicing nor triumphant with flag and music, but dumb, suffering, implacable. The flagship, “the poor wretched Vanguard,” as Nelson called her, seemed almost to mock the mirth of the Royal yacht by her dumb endurance.
But the yacht came alongside, and above them frowned the yawning ports with their hidden hell of guns. The whole scene and its cruel contrasts struck hot on Emma’s emotions. She stayed neither for King nor Princess, she cared not what eyes were on her, what tales malice might spread. She ran up the ladder, tripping on her dress, caring nothing, feeling nothing, till she knew her foot on English soil once more (for every English battleship is England) and there was Nelson waiting with his group of officers, collected from all the ships, his face white and nerve-shaken. She ran to him wildly, pale, transported with a like emotion, and so, sobbing out half senseless words—“Is it possible? O God, is it possible!” fell half fainting against him and could say no more, shaking from head to foot, and clinging to him lest she should fall at his feet. It was the last entry she would have chosen to make, but she was blown in the wind of feeling beyond her control.
With Troubridge’s help, who stood near him, he supported her with his one arm, and all the warriors closed round the Patroness of the Navy, forgetting for an instant the slowly following King, and more alarmed by this feminine weakness than by the French guns bellowing about them at Aboukir; and quickly her colourless cheek regained its colour and she blushed to find herself the centre of so much attention and begged them to neglect her, and was the more assiduously waited on.
“I have not slept of late. It is that!” says she, looking apologetically in Troubridge’s face. “I felt it as every Englishwoman must do.”
“Of course, madam, of course. What else? God knows I can sympathize. Not a man in the Fleet but has slept the uneasier for the Admiral’s wound. Look at him!”
She looked and again the colour ebbed from her lips. He was dead white. Every little bone stood out in his face, and a fever-spot burned on either cheek that made the hollow beneath cruel. His hair was combed low on his forehead to hide the raking tear made by the piece of iron that had struck his head at Aboukir and so stunned him that for weeks after he declared he was scarce answerable for what he wrote.
If his ship was battered, so too was he. She had not known nor guessed how sorely. There was not much of the man left to give for England now—his arm, his eye, this wound! A pain like a mother’s woke in her heart to see it, while Troubridge continued:
“The day we sent off Captain Hoste with despatches he was taken with a fever, Your Excellency, that had very near done his business. Indeed, for eighteen hours we gave him up. I wish to God he could have quiet and nursing better than we can give him. For, though every heart in the Fleet loves him, men are unhandy nurses, your Ladyship knows.”
She listened, trembling. The King was talking—talking—would he never cease? Could he not see the exhaustion in the man’s face before him? The Princess now. Good God, when would they have done? She edged up to her husband as soon as she got a moment and repeated Troubridge’s words.
“Sir William dear, we must have him ashore. We must nurse him at the Embassy.”
He was as eager as she. When did Sir William ever turn his back on a friend? They took their chance when the captains were crowding about the King, and then it was broached.
“Oh, God!” he cried. “If you did but know how it sounds to me! An English bed, and quiet, and to be away from the sea noises and the trampling, and the dashing of waters. My friends, ’tis half a health to me to see your kind faces. It would be a whole health to have rest.”
She noticed him more nervous, more emotional than he had been. A blow on the head—well, not surprising—but she would nurse him.
“I have letters from my wife that I must answer,” he said later. “No, my dear lady, no use to beseech me not to write awhile. I know it tries my head; indeed the ache when I write is almost unbearable, but she must hear if I drop.”
Emma would have given much to see those letters and know if the unseen Fanny rejoiced as she rejoiced. She did not as yet realize her sufficiently to bear her any enmity. Why should she? A tame English wife far, far away in a dull English village! Indeed, she seemed to have little to do with their great concerns.
She got him on shore that evening after a day of excitement to wear down a man all beef and sinew instead of the worn-out invalid she saw him. A perfect bedroom was appointed to his service away from the hot September sun and full of cool and healing glooms. His sitting-room was adjoining where he could lie and watch at a safe distance the work in hand repairing the wounds of the ships. Troubridge’s Culloden was barely afloat; his own Vanguard—her masts, by good fixing, might or might not hold out until he could get her to Gibraltar to refit. In short, at Naples he must stay awhile whether he would or not.
Officers came and went, but Emma shielded him where she could. He called her his guardian angel. One or two of his Fanny’s letters he showed to her and Sir William with pride. They should see how elegantly she expressed herself, how firm her trust in the Providence which had preserved and would preserve him yet. Indeed, those innocent wifely letters might have been published to the Fleet, so universal were they in the expression of a wife’s calm pride and joy in great achievements. She thanked him also very gratefully and touchingly for her share in his honours. “Baroness Nelson of the Nile”—had she ever thought she would live to see herself so uplifted? She must tell him, too, of the village rejoicings in his greatness. He would not despise these amid the applauses of Europe. The dear old farmer by the parsonage had said so and so. Old Goody Twoshoes had clasped her hands—he would remember! He did, and it touched him like a far, faint echo from days in another lifetime. For here was Emma beside him, cooling his temples with her fan, her lavender essence, her sweet care that shaded the windows to perfection yet admitted the soft Parthenopean breeze. Her voice rehearsed the honours and gifts awaiting him in Naples.
“Oh, my friend, your glory!” she said, leaning her head back in the armchair beside his sofa, a wandering sunbeam caught in her hair and eyes. “We have just had another letter. No, you shall not read it; it wearies your brain. Listen to me. The Grand Turk has written to King George to beg you may wear the diamond feather he took from his own turban to decorate you! Did ever any one hear of such a thing! I declare I could turn Turk for love of the dear old gentleman. I believe it’s the sign of sovereignty in Turkland. ‘Viva il Turco!’ says Emma.”
She cried it, clapping her hands for joy, and must needs twist up a scarf into a turban and parade the room, pretending herself a favourite sultana, and so lovely that had the Grand Turk seen her he must have offered Sir William millions of piastres on the spot to buy her for the Light of the Hareem, as Nelson declared.
“But I wouldn’t go!” cries she, sitting down, still in the turban. “I had rather be the glorious Nelson’s nurse than mistress of the world. Pray, pray, my Lord, if he sends the Turkish frigate here to congratulate you in all the forms, send the commander to me that I may entertain the good Turban soul.”
“Why, what would you do with him?” says Nelson, enjoying the little comedy.
“Why, I would heap him with honours and kindness and send him home convinced that an Englishwoman at all events has a soul. They say theirs haven’t, so I’m told, but God knows I have, and I love him for the honour his master has done to the friend of our hearts. So I do.”
“You wonderful woman—who ever doubted you had a soul!” He was looking at her with all his heart in his face. “Why, it overflows in every word you say and look you look. ’Tis easy to forget you have a body at all for all it’s so beautiful, and think you an angel just touching the earth and to fly away again from men not worthy of you.”
“Flatterer, flatterer!—and I that thought Nelson all truth and simplicity.” She put her finger on his lip to silence him and he kissed it. “But indeed, Nelson, I grudge at the poor beggarly honours from England. They have not done for you what they did for St. Vincent—St. Vincent!—a rush light to a star! Now listen! If I was King of England I’d have made you, with one stroke of my pen, Duke Nelson, Marquis Nile, Earl Aboukir, Viscount Pyramid, Baron Crocodile, and Prince Victory!—so that all the world might stare when you was announced. Now—what do you say!”
He laughed and laughed. She never tired him and her happy laughter was his lullaby. Baron Crocodile, she often called him after that. When she was not with him, she was planning the glorification for his birthday which the Royal Family and all Naples would have whether he would or not.
He snatched his minutes from these enchantments to write to Fanny and to exalt the Hamiltons as indeed bare gratitude demanded. Their goodness no tongue could tell, and if he was proud of late events his chief pride lay in the fact that he was his father’s son, her husband, and the friend of the Hamiltons. So he wrote.
Emma wrote also—a wife would naturally wish to hear from her husband’s friend.
But she wrote without her wonted exuberance. Those bourgeoise women locked in their dull villages—what could they know of the great world and its doings? And the little she had heard of Fanny convinced her that she would be of the Queen Charlotte type of woman; prim, prudish, inclined to consider that all freedoms partake of the nature of sin. She wrote, therefore, warmly but guardedly and submitted the letter to Nelson, who, quite unskilled in women’s instincts, was certain it must give my lady the utmost pleasure.
Doubtless it ought. But Fanny, too, had cares mingled in her triumphs. Many of the Jacobin stories of Emma’s past came to London and some blew like thistledown to Norfolk, where they seeded. All her British instincts protested against the Scarlet Woman enthroned in high places. It was like the vile looseness of these foreigners. Sir William Hamilton should be made aware of his country’s displeasure! And then came Nelson’s first letter from Naples.
“She does honour to the station to which she is raised!”—Fanny’s eyes grew hard as she read those foolish words. So like Horatio! So like all men, dazzled by a pretty face, and forgetful of every essential! It would have taken very much more than Emma’s warm but circumspect letters to convince her that there was no danger in the Embassy and its kindnesses. And Josiah’s descriptions—now a young man of nineteen—were not reassuring.
“Lady H. is a beautiful woman, but not like you, mother. She is too friendly, too noisy. I describe very ill, but I find no one can look at anything else when she is there. Sir Horatio she has always in tow.”
That sufficed. In a flash Fanny’s opinion was formed. Had Emma written with an inspired pen she could not have pleased her. What did she want thrusting herself in and complaining of the British Government’s inadequate reward to her husband? “Hang them, I say!” she had ended. Vulgar!—was Lady Nelson’s comment—what one would expect. Unseen, the two women were in opposition.
The galas at the Embassy would have infuriated her could she have seen them. My Lady Ambassadress received every one of note with a lavish and splendid hospitality which left Sir William looking ruefully at his accounts when they came in. Indeed, Emma’s gorgeous notions of their position began to embarrass him in any case. He feared the Etruscan vases must suffer.
But the rapture, the glorious delight in her face, swept both him and Nelson away. Indeed, within the limits due to an invalid, nothing was left undone to do him honour and Emma with him. Sir William was relegated to the background, a mere shadow of an ambassador, all his authority merged in his triumphant wife. Emma’s best friend, not to mention Lady Nelson, might have thought she exceeded the bounds of good taste here. It was like the blaring of brass and scarlet and had Nelson’s vanity not been nurtured gradually on a stronger and stronger diet of her praises it must have spoilt his stomach. Let the truth be told. Emma must have a master and a strong one to do herself justice. She had had it more or less in the boor, Sir Harry; she had had it certainly in the cool dominant Greville; and for years in her fear of Sir William’s superiority. Now, the rein was slipping from Sir William’s enfeebling hand. His age and her own marvellous achievement gave her a loose. She had the bit between her teeth, and Heaven knows where it would lead her. She flared like a bonfire in the pride of the Battle of the Nile, and indeed more leaked out of her services, though vague and indistinct, than was at all wise for the King’s ears, the Queen’s safety, or the credit that should only have crowned Sir William. She was overfamiliar with all.
As for Nelson, he was worn out and disgusted with all the fiddling and braying; with all but her, his twin soul; but slowly, under her proud care, the asses’ milk prescribed in the fashion of the day, and a quiet sunshiny visit with her to Castellamare, he regained his strength, though never perhaps the equanimity of the days before that dangerous blow on the head.
It was night and they sat together in the room of the mirrors looking out into the quiet dark. The lights of the ships were twinkling far off, and a broad moonlight floated translucent on the bay. She wore her evening dress and jewels, with a bandeau about her beautiful brow, rimmed with pearls and inscribed with his name. Sir William had fallen asleep for sheer exhaustion in his study, and Nelson’s face was haggard with fatigue. Some officers were still in the next room discussing the events of Naples and the near sailing of the Fleet.
“A wonderful, wonderful time it has been,” she said, leaning on the window-sill, the moonlight and the low lamplight fighting for her loveliness. “Oh, Nelson, it was the greatest time of my life. There can never be such another.”
“And it was all Emma’s doings!” he said, looking into her eyes. He had taken to calling her by her name as Sir William always did in speaking of her to him. It had come to be an openly acknowledged friendliness.
“My doing? No. The world’s doing. You have the world at your feet. It rings with your honoured name.”
“You put it there!” he said, and clasped her hand. “We can’t tell it wholly as yet for the Queen’s sake, but whether I live or die, the world shall know one day that the Nile was Emma’s battle. Not a gun would have been fired but for my friend.”
“Ah, you say that now”—her eyes were like moonlight themselves, moonlight-brimmed, soft, mysterious—“but you leave in a few days, and you will forget. You will go back to Norfolk and be so happy with your wife that all these days together will seem like a dream.”
“I shall never forget,” he said steadily. “There is not a thought I can think in future but is inspired by you, bound up with you. You are the most wonderful woman I ever met.”
“Your wife?”
“My wife is all that is valuable. I honour the ground she walks on. She is a wife to make a fireside home. But you—God knows what you are—you dazzle me. Honour. That is you. Courage. You again. Wisdom, daring—all, all are you. I can’t tell you from England in my thoughts. You inspire me.”
She turned and looked at him with moonlight eyes.
“You love England.”
“I love you,” he said hoarsely, the very veins in his wounded temple throbbing.
“You love your wife,” she insisted softly.
“I love you—you!” A pause, and the moonlight flooding the room—it bathed it, reflected from the great mirrors that brought the sea and sky about them.
She took his hand in hers and they looked at each other. Not a word, scarcely a breath. Slowly, slowly her eyes drew his—their faces were close, her breath was warm on his lips, her lips warmer. They kissed.
Shattering noise in the room. A chair knocked rudely over. Josiah Nisbet, wild with wine.
“Sir, you’re my commanding officer, and I know I lay myself open to court martial, but you’re my mother’s husband, and I swear I’ll die sooner than you shall carry on like this with another woman in her absence, be she who she may. Madam, you should be ashamed for yourself.”
The shouting, the noise, horrible! Emma shrank back against the window wordless—the drunken cub! Nelson caught him with his one arm as he advanced roughly on her.
“Josiah, you’re drunk, give over, or I’ll send you on board under arrest!”
But still he stormed on, shouting, raving, the suspicions of days taking head in mad insults to his stepfather and the Ambassadress.
The faithful Troubridge heard it from the next room and dashed in.
“Nisbet, good God!—come away! My Lord! Madam! Take no notice! He is mad drunk. Nisbet, if you don’t come away, I’ll knock you down.”
Still foaming out insults, Troubridge got him to the ground, and roughly secured his arms behind his back. Gag him he could not, and still the hoarse shouting continued. Emma, on a signal from Nelson, had slipped out of the room, and Troubridge shouted for Capel and they dashed cold water over his head and got him away in a half comic, half tragic frenzy to the waterside and to a boat and so out of sight and hearing. A burlesque in a way. Men laughed in the wardrooms of the ships when they heard it, and not one but said the cub should be turned adrift after all his stepfather’s goodness to him and endurance of his fat-head follies.
Yet also, there was not an eye but watched the beauty and the Admiral the closer when they were together, not an ear but was lengthened to catch the drift of gossip from that day on.
Josiah called next day and made his humble apology. He had been overtaken by drink in honour of the great victory and could not recall a single word he had said. Inexcusable, yet would the good Angel of the Fleet forgive the unforgivable? With forced kindliness that covered a pale rage and shame she forgave him for fear of worse, even wrote friendly-fashion of him in a letter to his mother a few days later, dreading what he might have said in that quarter. Nelson refused to see him. The insult to his commanding officer covered that.
But what, what had he seen, was her question to herself. That could neither be guessed nor opened up, and it left her face to face with her own judgment. Believe it or not who will, that kiss burnt on Emma’s lips more scorching than to the chastest wife in England, for it opened up all the gulfs of memory. She knew. As a wretch, climbed from the quicksands dimpling and quivering beneath him, knows their horrors, their slow unfolding of the doomed man body and soul, where another who has never struggled in them sees but the glassy pools on the surface and fears to wet his feet, so it was with Emma. A kiss! A word! She knew what dumb horrors might lie beneath a light approach, and trembled. But it could not help her. When the quicksands have the man by the foot, and a kiss a woman by the heart, what safety?
The day before the Fleet left, the lovers, for so indeed they were, met alone in the room of mirrors.
“Will you remember me? Will you write?” he asked, dry-lipped.
“Yes, yes,” she whispered, and half choked on the thought of his going.
“We must write!” he said as if in half excuse. “There will be sharp work at Naples yet, and only you to guide it and protect the Royals.”
“But I have you to help me,” she insisted, clinging to his hand as if for life. A pause—then very slowly:
“Emma, did that cub sicken you at me, or reveal your heart to you? Have you avoided me the last few days for love’s sake or fear?”
“Was I ever afraid?”
“Then it was love? You feared your own heart.”
Suddenly she flamed out glorious.
“I don’t fear my own heart. I love it because it loves my Nelson. No, how can we love each other too much? We love the same thing, glory and great deeds. We must love each other. But we will be true. I would not wrong my dear Sir William for all the wide world—no, not even for you that’s more to me than any world.”
“Good God—you’re right!” he cried. “We can love each other and let it drive us on to deeds that will make the world look and worship. Inspire me, for you’re mine, mine! But I will be true to my wife, and you to your good husband, and we’ll set an example of duty as well as of honour for all to see. My own, own Emma!”
He clasped her to his breast and drowned her in kisses—such kisses as had never yet touched her lips, and she should be a judge. His heart, his soul, his fiery honour, burnt in every one. And behind them stood Fate, and laughed cruelly in her sleeve at the old, impossible attempt to squar