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 t