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!”