L. Adams Beck

“ In no dream had he heard her voice—that voice of heart’s music—no dream had kissed his cheek with rose-warm lips.
“Emma? Emma?”—he said at last, in a thick muffled voice that made its way through a long-heaped silence; and then the life she brought with her flowed quicker through his blood and woke him to her sunshine.
“Is it true?” he asked at last, and she, her heart almost overflowing at her eyes, assured him it was Emma—“the same, same Emma that can never change to you. No, not if she lives to be a hundred.”
She calmed him after that. She had two hours—two whole golden hours! And see! ”

“ Get up, Teresa! The gentlemen will be here. What does it matter? Don’t be a fool!” And Teresa, wide-eyed with horror, “Does the Eccellenza doubt the holy saints?”
“No, but you will do quite as well if you pray to my Santa Loola! She’s as good as any of them! Try!”
It was as if she were drunk; drunk with excitement that strange night. Teresa half shrank away, and Emma pulled her to her knees again, and then sprang up.
“My hair. It’s getting late. Do it in a great knot at the back like the marble goddess in the museum. Come, be quick! The mountain can’t hurt you here! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nelson read that letter; his heart throbbing as he read. Who can understand as she could—none, none, in all the wide world, for she was a part of it. Dear Fanny! She will write fondly, and with a natural pride, but this one—Emma!—why a man may see her heart is almost bursting for triumphant tumultuous joy. She alone feels as he does. Their hearts beat together. The beautiful exultant creature! Yes, Fanny will write, but it will not be like this. Oh, to see her, to hear her voice repeating his own transports. Every word of Hoste’s feeds his flame of gratitude. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Beauty, economy, an oddly consorted pair, pleaded alike for Emma in the calm rationalism of Greville’s mind. He knew very well he would not meet that impassioned loveliness elsewhere—loveliness that might so easily walk in satin and jewels, but for his sake contented itself with dimity and a little gold chain stringing a miniature of himself. And he knew also that never, never again would his needs be met with such comfortable economy, and never again a cook like Mrs. Cadogan be at his service without a salary that must bulk largely in his carefully kept accounts. ”

“ There were the strangest moments of confidence between them in the half hours they could snatch together in the room of the mirrors when Hamilton was toiling in his office downstairs—moments of self-deception on Nelson’s part which Emma half prayed might always continue, half longed to break into reality as her life had taught it to her.
“My Emma, my own true comrade, never was such a friendship as ours in all the world. We will prove that a man and woman may be friends, with the deepest love to bind them and yet loyal as brother and sister to every obligation of honour.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Neither royalty nor beauty, nor all the kings of all the world had availed to save her from that fate. And could Marie Caroline look at her own children, happy, unconscious, in the gardens of Caserta without remembering the sin crying aloud to God and man of the torture and degradation of soul and body deliberately inflicted on her nephew, the Royal child of France, the Dauphin, by the French Republicans? It is no wonder that even her courageous spirit darkened into ashes sometimes and might have been quenched but for Emma’s confident energy and the white overshadowing wings of Nelson’s Fleet. ”

“ No casual mistress, but a wife was Fanny. It would have seemed almost indecent, even had it been possible, to surround her with worship and homage, and draw a passionate inspiration from her kind frank countenance. She could never understand romance. And yet Nelson was not without his starry lady whose glove he wore on his helmet, whose beauty he protested with sword and word in all companies, for whose least favour he would have died a thousand deaths. Such a man must kneel on his heart’s knees to some fair figure who shall crown him as he crowns her his Inspiration and All. ”

“ Hamilton springs to his feet. The King? Will he come in? No, it is time to go. Half a dozen men rush to fetch Emma’s cachemire and dispute as to who shall put it about her shoulders, and as they leave the door and emerge into the moonlight that spiritualizes her beauty with something unearthly fine and fair, they find the royal boat drawn up beside the Ambassador’s, and the “music” stationed in the bows strikes up a soft serenade to the English beauty—“eyes of light, smile of dawn” and so forth, a delightful flattery indeed. ”

“ No, loomed is the wrong word for the white, light brilliance rising beside a blue sea of dipping sparkles and splendours. In England, in April, the daffodils would be blowing in cold showers, the leaves would be tiny on the hedges about Paddington Green. Here summer blazed in what seemed perennial beauty and even her wearied eyes lifted in amazement at a world as new as heaven.
Sir William resolved to meet her in his own house, and this for two reasons. He knew Emma’s sensibility, as he called it, and feared some public outburst which should attract attention very unwelcome in their position. ”

“ She grew more beautiful, more brilliant, every day in that delicious sunshine; responsive as a flower. Endless were her dreams. If Greville married her, why then she might hope he would admit the little Emma as one of the circle. Why not? It could not be spoken, not hinted as yet; but once married, domestic pressure is slow but sure and she could imagine a future when Sir William might invite his nephew and niece with the small adopted daughter to do the honours for him at the Palazzo Sessa whilst he sank gently more and more into the interests of his antiquities and left the world to them. ”

“ It was done, and as the last boat reached the Vanguard, and the Royal fugitives ascended from the tossing waves, pale, terrified, rain-wet and wind-blown, Emma, leaning over the side, to watch their reception, felt her heart beat high with pride and triumph. Glory, even more glorious than her imaginations, was gained. She had saved a King and in so doing had proved her own courage and address to all the world.
The famous flight to Varennes of the unhappy Marie Antoinette and the King of France had failed for want of courage and address like her own. She had not failed. ”

“ Not to Greville, not to Hamilton, but to her own conquering personality was the victory due, and looking about her she saw none to rival her and therefore none to fear. There might be one or two women as beautiful in the eyes of men whose taste was on a lower plane than Sir William’s, she thought, but that was beauty only expressing itself in feature, whereas in herself it overflowed into such song, such pose, that Gallini, the famous impresario, offered her £2000 a year and two benefits if she would engage with him, whereupon Sir William gaily retorted that he had engaged her for life. ”

“ No one knew that better than the Queen now, whatever had been her opinion at first. Still, though an Irishman, he was strongly pro-British and imbued with the necessary hatred of the French and all their works, Hamilton was old—too much of the dilettante, his interest keener in an unearthed statue, a strayed gem from the Medici collections, than in all the protocols of Europe—clear-headed certainly, life-practised in the tortuous ways of diplomacy; but old; lacking in zest and fire. Yet, considering all this with the frigid judgment of a statesman, Marie Caroline felt his value still. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is sixty whomen and all well-looking but not like the fair Beatrice. ‘O Emma,’ she says to me, ‘they brought here the Viene minister’s wife but I did not like the looks of her at first. She was little, short, pinched face and I received her cooly. How different from you. We may read your heart in your countenance, your complexion, in short your figure and your features is rare, for you are like the marble statues I saw when I was in the world.’ I think she flattered me up but I was pleased.”
So was Sir William. He laughed to his heart’s content over this effusion—Emma among the nuns! ”

“ She triumphed, triumphed, as the Queen clasped her in her arms, seasick already, half fainting, and the terrified Royal children clung to her skirts. She led them to their cabins; she provided for every want.
She bestowed Sir William in such comfort as was possible, and had then one word with Nelson on the heaving rain-swept deck.
“Emma, my angel, my wonder; there is none like you—none. Thank God for your courage and wisdom.”
She clasped his hand, and he saw her face white and beautiful in the tossing light of a lantern. Then she sped away to her duties, and he to his. ”

“ A king could offer nothing that she had not, and as for love, she loved her handsome Highlandman, her John of Argyll, quite well enough to be marble to other wooing. Therefore, in all the world Emma could have found no better sponsor. With one or two unbending exceptions all the ladies, English and otherwise, were on her list at last and indemnified her for past insolences by present attentions. She visited the past on none, bore no grudges, received all who came with the same warm-hearted geniality. Sir William observed it with delight and felt his debt to the duchess increase daily. ”

“ And now this easy, half pagan, half material Emma was transplanted to one of the most voluptuously enervating climates of all the wide world—a place where all English standards and values seemed harsh, unreasonable, Puritanical; where Greville’s squeamish maxims of propriety were absurd and life flung its passions to the surface much as Etna and Vesuvius pour forth their lava; where the grapes so soon again ripen to vintage and the earth repairs her wrong with swift and more luxuriant blossom. ”

“ I wanted to come out and get cool. It smelt of wine. This smells of flowers. Nelson—how pale you are! What is it? Come out of this glare!”
She gave him her hand, and drew him up, and they wandered from the lurid patch of light flung by the windows out under the cool green boughs, moonlight-silvered, with gulfs of dark and light beneath them along the garden paths, and the first faint rustle of a bird disturbed in the boughs by their passage. Quiet, cool quiet and a great peace, and sweetness like the breath of a goddess about them in dark night. ”

“ A thievish sunbeam had made its way through a half-closed jalousie and was playing hide and seek in the auburn gold of Emma’s curls. It touched the mother-of-pearl of a little ear, listening, though he never guessed it, for the quick breath due to such industrious loveliness. It rushed on him then—Why not make Emma the lady of the Palazzo, the dispenser of his hospitalities? Why not as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb? They could not say worse than they were saying; then let them talk as they would and he would go his own way. Where in the broad earth could he find such another hostess? ”

“ Emma clapped her hands and sent the rays flashing from two rings of great diamonds. She might have been a graven image hung with jewels if she would, but refused extravagance of that order and commanded Sir William to save every stray penny for his Etruscan urns. What wonder she wore his heart instead of his fripperies? As a matter of fact, these rings were his dead wife’s. Even his good taste was not flawless.
“You shall see her, I promise, and she shall see you. But remember she is fifty now, and her health not strong. I like her. There’s a kind of courage in her that matches your own. ”

“ For to live without you is impossible. I love you to that degree that at this time there is not a hardship upon earth either of poverty, cold, death, or even to walk barefooted to Scotland to see you but what I would undergo. Therefore my dear, dear Greville, if you do love me, for my sake, try all you can to come here as soon as possible. You have a true friend in Sir William and he will be happy to see you. I find it is not either a fine horse or a fine coach or a pack of servants or plays or operas can make me happy. ”

“ 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. ”