CHAPTER XIII—­LORD NELSON

My father’s appointment with Lord Nelson was an early one, and he was the more anxious to be punctual as he knew how much the Admiral’s movements must be affected by the news which we had heard the night before.  I had hardly breakfasted then, and my uncle had not rung for his chocolate, when he called for me at Jermyn Street.  A walk of a few hundred yards brought us to the high building of discoloured brick in Piccadilly, which served the Hamiltons as a town house, and which Nelson used as his head-quarters when business or pleasure called him from Merton.  A footman answered our knock, and we were ushered into a large drawing-room with sombre furniture and melancholy curtains.  My father sent in his name, and there we sat, looking at the white Italian statuettes in the corners, and the picture of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples which hung over the harpsichord.  I can remember that a black clock was ticking loudly upon the mantelpiece, and that every now and then, amid the rumble of the hackney coaches, we could hear boisterous laughter from some inner chamber.

When at last the door opened, both my father and I sprang to our feet, expecting to find ourselves face to face with the greatest living Englishman.  It was a very different person, however, who swept into the room.

She was a lady, tall, and, as it seemed to me, exceedingly beautiful, though, perhaps, one who was more experienced and more critical might have thought that her charm lay in the past rather than the present.  Her queenly figure was moulded upon large and noble lines, while her face, though already tending to become somewhat heavy and coarse, was still remarkable for the brilliancy of the complexion, the beauty of the large, light blue eyes, and the tinge of the dark hair which curled over the low white forehead.  She carried herself in the most stately fashion, so that as I looked at her majestic entrance, and at the pose which she struck as she glanced at my father, I was reminded of the Queen of the Peruvians as, in the person of Miss Polly Hinton, she incited Boy Jim and myself to insurrection.

“Lieutenant Anson Stone?” she asked.

“Yes, your ladyship,” answered my father.

“Ah,” she cried, with an affected and exaggerated start, “you know me, then?”

“I have seen your ladyship at Naples.”

“Then you have doubtless seen my poor Sir William also—­my poor, poor Sir William!” She touched her dress with her white, ring-covered fingers, as if to draw our attention to the fact that she was in the deepest mourning.

“I heard of your ladyship’s sad loss,” said my father.

“We died together,” she cried.  “What can my life be now save a long-drawn living death?”

She spoke in a beautiful, rich voice, with the most heart-broken thrill in it, but I could not conceal from myself that she appeared to be one of the most robust persons that I had ever seen, and I was surprised to notice that she shot arch little questioning glances at me, as if the admiration even of so insignificant a person were of some interest to her.  My father, in his blunt, sailor fashion, tried to stammer out some commonplace condolence, but her eyes swept past his rude, weather-beaten face to ask and reask what effect she had made upon me.