“A wife who can take your glories so coldly is what I can’t understand. I should have thought—but no matter! If it moves you—if you think she is worthy of your greatness—”
He understood the note of pain in her voice, and clasped her hand in his. She could feel its feverish heat; the nervous thrill in it.
“She is my wife no longer. It is you—my own Emma, the mother of my child. But you have a generous soul, you must know from that letter she has heard the base stories that were scattered from Palermo, and she wants to assure me that neither those nor my refusing to let her come out have made any difference. She is a woman I must respect to my last day for I have never known a spot in her—no, not one. If I could keep her as a friend I would, but the world is so impossible—impossible to what it can’t understand or value. Still, would my Emma value her Nelson, if he could cast such a woman off without a pang? God knows I dread that meeting in London, and to wound her tender heart!”
“Tender?” she cried. “I should have said not tender—hard. See that cold, cold letter, and you coming home with such honours as was never seen in the world. No—don’t mistake her. She will value the world’s good opinion. She won’t throw away all for you, as I’ve done with all the dangers and ruin likely before me. The one is love; the other—I don’t know what to call it.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” he said, his nervous face quivering and lips twitching. “If you asked me I would never see her again. I am all yours—body and soul until death us do part. But—she is a good woman.”
“And I am not good? Oh, Nelson, is this the reward of such love as was never known?”
“You are my saint, my guardian angel. There is not a thought of my heart inconstant to you. She is nothing—nothing! See!”
He tore the letter into tiny fragments, unclosed the porthole by an inch, and as the wind screamed in at it, he pushed his fingers through, and sent the fragments flying on the gale. He closed it again and returned to his seat by Emma.
“That for her!” he said. Even to Emma in her triumph there was something shocking in the incident. Love! To what could it drive a man? Yet she was glad at heart.
They landed in a storm so terrible that only Nelson’s advice and entreaties compelled the pilot to bow to his better judgment, and surely the sight of the English welcome was reassuring, for all Yarmouth had turned out to meet the returning hero. Emma too was not forgotten. Amid the music and rejoicings a ring of fine topaz set in brilliants was bestowed upon her by the enthusiastic welcomers. Sir William was quietly in the background, used indeed by this time to that effacement. Speeches, sentiments, toasts, abounded. Her smiles, bows, exuberance, fanned the popular welcome into roaring flame. Never was such a scene.