She caressed his hair tenderly with her soft hand. Indeed, she was touched.
“Then I want my Nelson, the dear husband of my heart, to be very, very wise for both our sakes. You must not quarrel with your wife. However malicious and angry she may be, we must not let her put us in the wrong. Remember all I have to hide, and help me, help me. I want to win her friendship—that will be the greatest safety I can have, at all events until this is over. I will do anything in the world to please her—swallow any insult.”
“You shall swallow none!” says Nelson, with his grand air. “If she dares insult you—”
She put her hand on his mouth.
“No, no. You must be patient for my sake. Think of all we have at stake. I would crawl to her feet to carry things off. And you must not be too much with us at first. No, you must not. We must deny ourselves. Remember you are the world’s hero as well as your Emma’s and every eye will be upon you. Of course I know that will carry us through in the end for a man who has served his country like you may do what he will. I am not afraid of our reception in England. It is only your wife. If we can win her, all is won and safe. And Greville. I must please him every way I can, and he must never suspect anything.”
But for all her exhortations she dreaded Nelson’s impetuosity. She would willingly have had him on a foreign station until the crisis was over, much as she needed his help. There were points where she feared that she herself could not restrain him, and one of them was his wife. What was that cold, unknown woman doing—what thinking? She was measuring herself this time against a force she had never fought before. She could glean really nothing of her from Nelson. Men cannot describe women to each other—the equation of sex forbids it. Fanny remained a silent sphinx.
They embarked at Hamburg in a storm which might have prefigured much if they had taken it as an omen. Sir William, terribly shaken and suffering, could only groan aloud that he wished they had never left Naples. This cursed war and its consequences were ruining him in purse and health alike. Emma left his groanings to seek shelter by Nelson, for it seemed at one time as if all her doubts and fears might be settled in a way that would make no appeal to human judgment needful. She found him pale and serious in the little cabin, a letter in his hand, his mind evidently abstracted from the yelling wind and rolling waves. She came and caught his arm for safety, flung against him by the rolling of the ship, and he drew her down beside him.
“It reminds me of the Vanguard and the voyage to Palermo!” he said. “But what does that matter? Storms blow themselves out but there are things—”
He stopped, and put the letter in her hand. She knew the writing—Fanny’s. She read it eagerly: “I have this instant received a note from Admiral Young, who tells me if I can send him a letter for you in an hour he will send it, therefore I have only time to say I have had the pleasure of receiving two letters from you. I can with safety put my hand on my heart and say it has been my study to please and make you happy, and I still flatter myself we shall meet before very long. I feel most sensibly all your kindnesses to my dear son, and I hope he will add much to our comfort. Our good father has been in good spirits ever since we heard from you; indeed my spirits were quite worn out, the time had been so long. I thank God for the preservation of my dear husband, and your recent success at Malta. The taking of the Généreux seems to give great spirits to all. God bless you, my dear husband, and grant us a happy meeting.” So, with an affectionate prefix and ending, the letter stood.
“It is the answer to mine forbidding her to join me in Palermo,” he said, and there was something in his voice that shot a pang of dread to her heart. That quiet reference to his capturing the French ship—what man of sense could compare it with her own violent outpourings of delight at his successes, she thought. And yet—there was a calm tone of settled, steadfast affection, of wifely ownership, of the family ties—“our good father”—that wounded Emma at every syllable and woke the worst in her. It seemed to rise superior above all she could say or do; the wife, the happy wife who had no secrets, whose position all must do reverence to, while she—she was nothing but a hindrance, a hidden shame, the blot on an honour that nothing else could have spotted. It seemed to set Lady Nelson apart and beyond her. She handed it coldly back.