"What a change!"
It was the old Nelson he saw, and yet only the wraith of the old Nelson. There was a grey and ghastly darkness about him that made the Parson afraid. It was the grey of snow at dusk, the darkness of a pool which was haunted.
The Parson knew the tale, as all Europe knew it. Once he had doubted: now he could doubt no longer. Nelson's story was graven on his face—the story of the man who has betrayed himself. It was writ large there—the struggle, the surrender, the quenching of his ideal in the cataract of passion. He had run away from his best self, as many a man has run. He had slammed a door behind him, hoping to shut out his soul. And now the door had burst open. The ghost of himself, his old self, that had haunted him so long, rapping at the door, refusing in God's name to be laid, had rushed in upon him with a shriek.
He was wrestling with it now.
No wonder he was changed.
The Parson, almost in tears, recalled the Nelson with whom he had chewed ships' biscuits and exchanged dreams in the trenches at Calvi—the Nelson of Corsican days with a face like the morning and a school-boy's heart, his eyes forward into the future. Now he had realised his dreams and more. The young post-captain had become Lord Nelson, Duke of Bronté: St. Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen behind him.
And, and, and….
Suddenly, as though divining the thoughts of his old friend, Nelson fell forward.
"O Joy!" he cried, "I have sinned."
He clutched the Parson's shoulder, hugging it.