Now, Will was not ordinarily what is called an approachable person;
but she had hit upon the password to which he never could turn a deaf
ear, and he directed that she should be shown in.
No sooner had she entered the door, carrying a bundle, which, to the
footman's evident distress, she had refused to trust out of her own
hands, than, seeing me, she stopped. But Will said, in cold tones that
would have frightened any one not sure of her mission, "This gentleman
also had the honour of serving under the Admiral." To all who had
served under that immortal man he was always "the Admiral."
She looked at us both, and I am vain enough to think that she felt my
presence would make what she had come to say easier, rather than more
difficult, though Will's face had softened when he saw that she was a
gentlewoman of reduced circumstances.
The bundle she had brought with her, tied up in a piece of faded green
silk, contained something hard and square. When she unknotted it and
produced three leather-bound volumes of the kind used for journals,
and opened one at random, Will might have seen a ghost.
This was in the year 1819, you must remember,--long years after the
Admiral had seen his work finished, and had passed away like Moses in
sight of the fulfilled promise. And Will, who had been in constant
personal attendance nearer and more confidential than a secretary, saw
before him, as plainly as his eyes could show him, three volumes of
the identical kind always employed by the Admiral for his private
affairs, and written, as it seemed to Will, by the Admiral's very own
hand. And Will, though he was not wise in book-learning, nor had given
much attention to such matters, had had the very best opportunities
for observing the Admiral's writing. He knew every turn in the clear
but shaky characters, written with the left hand by one accustomed
till he was more than thirty-five years old to penning with his right.
The binding, the paper, and the ink, as well as the handwriting, were
the counterparts of what Will had seen so often before the Admiral on
his desk.
The old lady did not offer a word of explanation until we had examined
them for some minutes, and, looking up, had laid them down, and then
she told us a likely story enough.
It came out that she was Mrs. Hunter, and the good soul who had taken
my Lady Hamilton, then like to die, and in great destitution, into her
house at Boulogne, and had sheltered her and maintained and nursed her
free of charge until her death.
"These three volumes," she said, "were her Ladyship's last and
greatest treasure, which she never would have far away from her, and
which, when she was alone, she read to her great comfort."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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