Sir William (39 page)

“Then there is no need to keep him company.”

“But I don’t
like
Greville!” wailed Emma. It was always so difficult to make men understand that a woman has so little to fight with, to protect her little all, that a scrupulous choice of implements is seldom in her power.

*

“My partiality to you, and the thorough confidence I have in you, despite of any attempts that have been made to disturb them, remains, and will, I am confident, to my last moment, in full force,” wrote Sir William to Greville. “My visit to Milford last year convinced me of the propriety of all your operations there, which may still operate in my favour during the short time I can expect to live, but must be attended with immense profit to my heirs hereafter….”

Emma was a Hamilton by marriage, not by character, and there is an entail of the heart as well as of land. There was, perhaps fortunately, only one of her. But there were many Hamiltons, and that they be provided for was no more than Roman piety. In each generation, the same couple play out the same inevitable drama—it is only the circumstantial details that change—and for this they will need the family costumes, props and properties.

“I admit she is sometimes difficult,” said Nelson.

“Always admit what cannot be denied,” agreed Sir William, “but only to yourself; never to others. That way you save both the appearance and the reality.”

He was not bitter. Nonetheless, he knew that an old man must never ask for anything he cannot pay for; so much for candles, so much for wine, and a lien against the estate in order to bribe a proper funeral and an affectionate regard.

Alone in the house at 23 Piccadilly, he found himself trying to remember when emotion in him had died. It
was difficult to detect the exact moment, since he had been a dutiful son, an affectionate husband, a fond uncle, a passionate connoisseur of the antique, a kindly lover, an obliging husband the second time, a warm friend upon occasion; there was no chink anywhere, therefore it must have been at some other time—when he was a child perhaps. He had thus come equipped to maturity, for it is true, the absence of consideration allows us to be considerate; the death of loving, to be affectionate; the irrelevance of hope, to be cheerful; death by slow social strangulation, to be sociable; and if we can hold our liquor, so much the better—we shall be clubbable fellows to the end. So we become the fetches of ourselves, always beckoning, but no one comes, because we are not there. We are only an appearance. We have become realists.

Dear me, this won’t do at all, said Sir William to himself, rather hoping Mrs. Cadogan would appear with one of her loathsome cups of beef broth, but she was at Merton. It is my body is depressed, not I.

Though he had been sensible of its inevitability, even as a young man, Sir William had seldom pondered the decline itself. There are only two forms of decay available to us: either one dies surrounded by one’s loved ones, or else one goes off to the graveyard in a weary rage, like a bull elephant, all by oneself. Which is to say, the cleaning woman finds you the next morning dead, with a book fallen off the coverlet and the candle snuffer never used. All of which was unavoidable and therefore could be accepted. What he could not accept, and had never envisioned, was that one should sit dying surrounded by loved ones who not only paid you no heed whatsoever, but screamed their heads off besides.

The ancient Romans, when simulating that civilization to which they aspired but for which they would make no effort beyond the borrowing, were saved from the horrors of decay—if eminent enough—by the social discipline, legal benefits and imperial sanction of suicide. When they could not kill each other, they calmly (we are told calmly) killed themselves. But that was before
Christianity imposed dalliance upon even the post-Augustan mind and went fishing for souls with the sky hook of salvation, jerking us ashore whether we wished to be landed or not.

The next best thing, I suppose, thought Sir William, since I am about to leave England for the last time, is to pay the obligatory round of courtesy calls and farewell visits. And indeed it will be agreeable to do so, for people are always at their pleasantest just before you leave. And since I do not like this house empty, back to Merton Place I suppose it must be.

*

Nelson had bought two cows, two calves, the back pasture and the duck close, too. He proposed a farm.

“Emma, do you like what you have become?” asked Sir William, thinking of Greville’s Paulus Potter and perhaps of his Honorable Emily Bertie, too.

“Become?” she asked, astonished. “Why, I am what I have always been.” She went on feeding the chickens.

That was perhaps true, yet for a brief moment fifteen years ago she had given promise of becoming somebody else. It seemed to him curious that Nelson should like her for what he thought to be her polish, whereas he—who had supplied the polish—had liked her best for something polish can never give.

If only it were not for the noise, thought Sir William, who was beginning to find the bosom of a family as bumpy as that of Diana of Ephesus (whom, indeed, in other ways, Emma was coming to resemble).

It was spring. Charlotte came and went, an adolescent timeserver, like her father. The apple trees were in early bloom and there was now a beehive. Emma turned around and around in the kitchen garden, like an old winklewoman, to choose an icebox lettuce which, since there was still frost at night, had the feel of a pickled brain in an anatomy school. Charlotte, all ink and vivacity, was translating one of Madame Sevigné’s letters, not well. The Reverend Edmund was to arrive and would be company, or at any rate, a coeval.

Sir William, who could not bear it, went up to town.
When he returned, it was to find still another child there. Horatia was now over two.

“She is the daughter of one of my cadets, a man named Thompson,” said Nelson. “I propose to adopt her, and Emma has kindly offered to assist.”

A great deal of his time was spent sitting on the grass with the child. Emma, in her best little-girl manner, also played with it. It was a docile child. Sir William had no complaints to make of it, but the whole household now seemed organized around it. You caught glimpses of it being dandled somewhat every time you went for a walk or tried to use the library. Even Mrs. Cadogan had taken to hovering.

The apple blossoms came wandering down, cast loose by an afternoon shower.

“And the
dish
,” said Emma, with a glance at Nelson, “ran away with the spoon,” playing with Horatia’s toes.

“Fork,” said Nelson.

“Not in this case.” Emma gave him one of her more dazzling smiles. It was their love pledge, was it not?

Sir William, who had gone to the orchard for a stroll, turned back and did not know why he was so angry, except that the child so clearly had the Nelson nose.

Was Greville to be disinherited to the benefit of that? He was not ravished by the appearance of little Miss Thompson. And if he wished to take the carriage to town, why should he not do so? It was his carriage.

If it was querulous, he could not help it. Rage without either the will or power to punish is always querulous.

*

Of this even-tempered epistle, Emma caught only the next to last phrase.

“Horatio, he knows about the child!” she yowled. She was both indignant and frightened.

Nelson took the letter, read it, and became solemn. He did not reassure her.

“It is his way to hint. He says he is not blind to my defects.” She could think of no others.

“He is right. There is no call to shout at him. He is not in his grave yet, you know,” said Nelson soberly.

“
I
shout at Sir William?” She was outraged.

“Up and down the stairs again.”

“But he’s so difficult sometimes.”

“He is an old man. And though you are not, thank goodness, his wife, he is your husband. And for mention of that, I do not like these incessant dinner parties either.”

“I only ask your friends.”

“What friends? Does Troubridge come? Does Hardy come?”

“But we cannot afford two carriages, and the one is always in use. Charlotte uses it. Your brother William uses it. All the Nelsons use it. And something must be available if Horatia is to be fetched. Besides, it is not my fault. They have been asked.”

“Let the old man have his chariot,” said Nelson. “And let him also have his evening quietly till it be out.”

She did not understand. She was deeply hurt. He did not seem to sympathize.

*

With Mrs. Cadogan she fared no better.

“But why? Indeed I am not conscious of any fault. What have I done?” she demanded, and threw a scene
and roared like a lion, who in times past would have shivered like a mouse.

Mrs. Cadogan folded her hands. “You’ve been yourself and it won’t do,” she said. “If you tumble him down, you will tumble right after him. Sir William means exactly what he says.”

Emma pouted, a thing she had never done when young, when misfortune had slimmed her down and made her acceptable. But being at bottom a good-tempered creature with no malice in her—only a little necessary tendency to plot—she said,

“Very well, he shall have his chariot if he wants one. I suppose we can economize somewhere.”

And off she went to Sir William’s room, to say she was sorry; and sat on the floor and rested her head against the arm of his chair and confessed that, yes, she had been bad, though this twenty years later, she did not cry, but watched a branch sway outside the window instead.

“Oh, William, do forgive me, do,” she said. “It is all so difficult to manage.”

“It is too late in the evening for Greek Attitudes,” said Sir William. “It is not a matter of forgiving or forgetting either. It is simply a matter of learning how to control yourself. Now go to bed. I am tired.”

So Emma gave him a filial kiss on the forehead, and since contrition had made her hungry, went downstairs and ate two slices off a saddle of mutton in the larder, and a bunch of haws; puzzled, while cracking them, with the feeling that she had done all this before.

But she would
try
. If he wanted to go up to town, very well, they would all go up. It was some time since they had had a week in town.

*

In April, Nelson’s father died at Bath, on the 26th, which was Emma’s birthday. Nelson was himself too ill to attend the funeral.

“My poor, poor Horatio,” said Emma, compassionately. She was still his little wife. But Nelson had had a wife before.

“I should like to sit a while with Sir William,” he said. “Alone.”

Emma went off, just as relieved as not. She did not understand silent grief. In Cheshire, one held a wake and beat the walls. She could remember that from childhood. For one must do something, and there is nothing to say. They are just dead, that’s all.

Whereas as far as she could overhear, Nelson and Sir William sat in the library and said nothing whatsoever; she was relieved when at last she heard the stopper to a tantalus chink.

Nelson was standing at the window, looking out at a gray day.

“I tried to make her sensible,” he said, “that she must modify her ways, since she cannot mend them. She has a loving heart. It is merely that it takes these overexuberant forms.”

Sir William said nothing. There was nothing to be said. If they could not share the same wife in the same ways, it was nonetheless evident that they had come to share the same burden.