Sir William (32 page)

*

“You wanted to see
me
,” said Miss Cornelia Knight (a person of no importance: Miss Cornelia Knight,
the
poetess). “I am so flattered.” This was her way to put him at his ease.

Sir Thomas Troubridge was not put at his ease. It was not the poetess he had come to see, but the daughter of Admiral Sir Joseph Knight, for the Navy looks after not only its own, but their own as well. This is called tradition. Though badly wounded, Troubridge was a handsome man, still youthful in manner. He wished he were anywhere else but here. There was not only loyalty to Nelson to be thought of, but also loyalty to a naval widow’s child.

“I do not know how to put the matter delicately,” he said.

“Then put it as best you can!” snapped Miss Knight, who knew what was coming, for she had eyes in her head even if she had learned to close them. “Though living a sheltered existence, I have been much upon the Continent. I may be offended, but I shall not be shocked.”

Her little game was about up. Though a resident in this household in all innocence, she could hardly stay on once she had been offered a bite of the apple. She would have to move out, and what then of the autobiography? She would be no better informed than any other informer.

“Surely you have heard some rumor of what goes on in this house,” said Troubridge unhappily.

“Sir, I am too grateful to Sir William and Lady Hamilton to lend credence to rumor,” said Cornelia, in her haughty manner.

“Well,” countered Troubridge, still more unhappily, eyeing a bowl of apples on the sideboard. They were Gravensteins, he noticed. “One does not have to lend credence to fact. It is just there. Whether you believe in it or not.”

“Oh!” gasped Cornelia. It was quite a fine little gasp. It was followed by an equally fine little silence, devised to simulate startled enlightenment. “It is true that things have become
very
unpleasant.” Emma had caught her sighing over poor Lady Nelson, about whom it really was too bad.

“I am sure you would not wish to lend your support to the, so to speak, insupportable,” said Troubridge, not wanting to come right out and say the thing.

“Oh no,” said Cornelia, who had been housed, fed and feted for a twelvemonth now, and felt suddenly the need of support herself.

“I think it would be better that you move out at once. After all, we do not want you
smirched
,” Troubridge said heartily.

There was a pause.

“The Nepeans have suggested that, until you can find some otherwhere, perhaps you would like to take refuge
with them. Your retreat could be disguised as a visit.”

Cornelia brightened. The Nepeans were not only rich but well connected; they were quite respectable.

“I shall pack my few things,” she said. “This cannot be easy for you. I know your loyalty to our dear Lord Nelson, who is a fine man, no matter what people say. I am much in your debt.”

Once she had packed, Troubridge showed her to her carriage, shut the door on her, and waved her solemnly away. And that, he thought, makes one gossip the less. Though Nelson might be an excellent strategist, at tactics Troubridge was not bad; so off rode the dickeybird, weight eight stone, and would that there were two of her,
clack,
clack,
clack.

*

As Vice-Chamberlain, Greville had chambers for nothing at St. James, which was fortunate, for freehold grew more expensive every day; Edgware Row was built over; and if he could save on nothing else, he was always prepared to save on his own expenses. So he received them there, that red-brick relic of times past being as close to Court as Emma was ever to get.

Though by no means resembling that highly polished shiny pink object, the Banker Rogers, Greville had become equally octopoidal. His hair was now thin; in compensation, his manner had become more weighty; he had a small pink mouth adapted for sucking; he had a beak; and since he still minced upon his toes, he had a pouter pigeon look. In short, people found him charming, charming, charming—even sometimes when he was out of the room. The years of talking to Towneley had left their mark, and so had Taste. He was fifty-one (Towneley was well-nigh dead).

“How nice it will be to see him again,” said Emma. “I am quite curious.” And meant it. She expected to enjoy herself, and it was her suggestion that they go all three,
Tria
juncta
in
uno,
for that she would enjoy even more.

His rooms, though paneled up in the best Regency (it was expected any day—the King was once more coasting
down toward the dark winter ponds of insanity, on which the ice was again thin) style, were at the same time dark and damp, in the good old English tradition. They had an old-boy donnish air about them, down to the bowl of winter flowers which no woman could have arranged. Otherwise there was no change. The Honorable Emily Bertie, only a little cracked, and dirty-blue brown because of Sir Joshua’s passion for asphaltum as a medium, her skin turned milk glass, her nose inalterable, balanced from one wall the Paulus Potter cow, the size of a Shetland pony, which still munched mellifluously above the mantelpiece on the other. There was a good old English sideboard, and two very bad new French chairs, neither of which Emma remembered, and a console with legs in the new Egyptian taste, sphinxes with brass faces, mahogany bodies, and below, slipping in and out beneath their petticoats, brass feet.

Charles himself, all hospitality, had half an empty tantalus out and four very small glasses, their glass thick and sparkling, their capacity, unlike Emma’s (of which he had been warned), small.

Nor, though he had heard she had gained weight, had he expected to find her so huge. It was as if someone had moved in the Farnese Hercules and changed the sex. The floorboards creaked.

“Charles,” she purred, “how very pleasant to see you again.” And with every evidence of pleasure (all neatly labeled and laid out upon a table: it might not look like much, but it would hang him), she pumped his hand.

“My dear Emma,” he shrilled, with
some
emotion. “What, no kiss for Greville?”

“Why no,” she said, shaking her parasol. “Not now. Whatever would dear Lord Nelson think?”

What dear Lord Nelson was thinking was that Sir William merely played the flute; he did not sound like one. Why must these men of taste grow shrill with age? A capon, to Nelson, belonged where it belonged, upon a plate.

Greville, casting a roguish eye upon the company,
clinked stopper against tantalus and proposed a small drink.

“It is so long,” he said, “since we have
all
been together. My goodness, it has been nine years.” And he regarded Emma critically. “If you were younger, I could say, My, how you’ve grown. But as it is, I know not what to say.”

“Good,” said Emma.

“The sherry is indeed excellent,” pronounced Nelson, venturing out into the silence first, warily, but with his best foot forward.

Greville giggled. “It is one of my little economies,” he said. “Number 452. You will not get it any other where, but Figgis is a reliable man.”

“Figgis?”

“My wine man.”

(He knows not what he does.)

“Ah, then you like it?”

(“No.”)

“You are to be complimented, Charles.”

“A most tastefully appointed room,” said Nelson, who hated everything in it down to the last
famille
verte
vase and Dutch Delft ginger jar. It was a clutter. It was too hushed. He had never before drunk sherry in chapel. The décor would have profited for being dusted by a poltergeist. He wanted air.

“Well,” said Emma, “I don’t mind if I do.”

Greville looked as though he had been struck.

“Don’t fuss, Charles,” said Sir William. Immediately Charles modulated to a manly tone, sincere, concerned, responsible—even considerate—and poured Emma some more. The upper registers for art, the lower for commerce, and in between a calm and level purr.

Sir William felt at his ease, for there were tidbits here from his own collections as well as the Correggio, the barterable bargain of a lifetime which had turned out to be a Cambiasi, though Mr. Vandergucht had offered
half.
To date, the Correggio had been his only error. In short, they were all so delighted to see each other again that they felt quite uncomfortable.

*

“That man is a scoundrel,” said Nelson to Emma privately. “He would want to talk, but I put a stop to the damned gabble, gabble, gabble. We are used to speak our mind of kings and beggars and not fear being betrayed, but Judas himself was never such a tattletale. He is too old to be a piglet any longer. I hope Sir William feeds him turnip tops.” But later, as he usually did, he cooled down. Though he wasted no oil, Greville understood to perfection the fine art of water smoothing, and was down on his knees with a trowel instantly, a fellow Mason, the better to cement (the metaphor is mixed—so were his motives) relations.

*

“What is this story she spreads about, about a previous secret marriage?” asked Greville of Sir William. “It will accomplish nothing. It did not take place. And if it did, the rules of society are never retroactive. She cannot be received at Court.” He was in a temper.

“I believe she has some hopes of creeping in under Lady Nelson’s pinfeathers,” said Sir William, amused by all this, though sadly so.

“Lady Nelson is nothing but an elevated commoner. There is a limit to the number of people you can pull up by your own boot strings.” Having no children of his own, Greville was much taken up these days with genealogies, as is the way with disappointed men.

It was not Sir William’s. No, he is not at all like me, he thought, and felt a warm glow of self-gratulation and also a twinge of neuralgia, a complaint he had for years forgot.

“Pray tell me, Charles, in what month do you finally bring yourself to light a fire?”

“January,” said Charles, without thinking.

“Good,” said Sir William gravely, rising to his feet to ease the stiffness in his joints. “I shall return.”

*

On Sunday the 9th, Nelson paid his respects to the Admiralty Board, and afterward was so amiable as to
show himself to the people. When the curiosity of his grateful countrymen became inconvenient, he ducked into Somerset House, was smuggled out a back way, and that evening entertained the Hamiltons at Nerot’s Hotel, which gave the two ladies a chance to make comparisons, if not conversation. On Monday, Nelson moved to a house in Dover Street; the Hamiltons to Beckford’s house in Grosvenor Square, for the house they had taken in Piccadilly would not be ready until New Year’s. On the 12th, Nelson and Sir William were presented at Court, where they got a cool reception. His Majesty merely asked if Nelson had recovered his health, and did not wait for a reply. This rudeness was not the result of moral indignation—the Queen looked after morals—but of etiquette, Nelson having used his Sicilian title without asking English permission. He must mind his manners, apply for permission, and mend his signature. Nelson had not known. In Palermo, there had been no end to personal display; but England is a limited monarchy. He put in his petition and signed himself Nelson and Bronte from then on.

That same day he and Lady Nelson went alone to Lord and Lady Spencer’s.

Across the table, Fanny, who had talked both left and right until she was dizzy, drew to herself some walnuts, peeled them, put them in a glass and offered them to Nelson, who was sitting opposite her. The gesture would prove to all that they were not estranged by anything more serious than a healthy, natural reserve.

Nelson swept the glass aside so roughly, for he was a little in wine, that it shattered against a set dish, and glass and walnuts flew everywhere.

Fanny was startled into tears. Lady Spencer rose and suggested that the ladies retire. And then, since she was hostess and so had first grab, descended majestically upon Fanny, so that with one thing and another, in three hours—once the gentlemen had come upstairs and the ladies had gone downstairs and the last carriage had departed through streets spread with invisible straw—it
was possible for her to burst into her husband’s dressing room with her dramatic announcement.

“She has told me how she is situated. She now knows all.”

“Well, now she has seen what she says; no doubt she knows what she thinks,” said Spencer, unhelpfully. “But I wish she did not.”

“The poor thing had to talk to someone or burst.”

“I should say her bubble was burst already. It is a damned shame. The man is too indispensable to be dispensed with. Why could he not remain a bachelor beyond Gibraltar, like the rest of them, and leave his reputation intact? What else do we have brothels for?”

“Spencer, that is a
man
’
s
view.”

“Well, now it seems it is a woman’s business,” said Spencer with a reminiscent sigh, for he had not himself been abroad for some time. “But what is to be done?”

“Why, send him off to be a bachelor,” said Lady Spencer, “and when he returns they will both be that much the older.” For she knew by experience that though a marriage can survive a long separation, passion cannot.

“
Ummm
,” said Lord Spencer. “
Ummmm
.”

*

“I cannot live without you,” said Nelson, who was, alas, sincere.

“You silly boy, you do not have to,” said Emma, who was, alas, now not. “We can all four visit back and forth.” It was still her hope that Fanny might be induced to sponsor her at Court.

“For a woman who says nothing, she kicks up the devil of a row,” said Nelson. “How I long to embrace you. Has Sir William returned?”

“Ah so do I,” Emma agreed hastily. “No, he went out, but will be back shortly.”

“I must return to her.”

“Nelson,” enjoined Emma, who thought Fanny a frail stick of a woman, but one never knew. “Be true unto yourself. Do nothing
vile
.” For a woman eight months pregnant, she did not show it. She looked a virgin still.

“I shall not. Besides, she is in her flannels.”

“In her
what?
”