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.