The gods sell everything at a fair price.
CHAPTER XXVI
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.
He knew it was a tragedy and denied it fiercely to himself and to Emma. She was cold, dull, heartless. She did not care a rap. What comfort could a man find in a pale, silent creature like that? He wanted warmth and colour; he wanted tender flattery. Was it his fault if she had changed in his last absence? He wanted to be friends provided she would fall in joyfully with all his views regarding Emma, and she would not. She obeyed his wishes like a slave. They were seldom alone; he contrived that; but when they were, little was said and less answered.
But—there is justice. Though Lady Nelson made no plea for herself, the world made it for her. There was deep indignation against the treatment she was receiving. Queen Charlotte entirely refused to recognize Emma, and this although Sir William made his best interest with the King, his foster brother. The third George could be a veritable farmer George for bluffness when he so pleased, and he told Sir William to his face that he might very well remember how much he had disapproved the marriage, how he had assured him at the time that whatever the Neapolitan Court might do, the English Court would hold to its rules; though he himself would be always welcome. And to Emma’s rage and Nelson’s infinite disgust, Sir William serenely attended the next Court.
“It would make a talk if I did not, and at my age I cannot be troubled,” he said, with a smile which had a family resemblance to Greville’s.
“It would trouble me to attend without my wife,” Nelson said, a little too bluntly.
“Yet I have not seen you take her,” Sir William rejoined with the same fine smile, and the conversation dropped.
And the more public opinion set against him, the more defiant Nelson grew. In his own words, he was fixed as Fate, and daily more bound to the woman whose ordeal was drawing nearer.