The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 108

NELSON'S HEART

In the quiet cabin they looked into each other's eyes, these two old friends.

It was ten years since they had met.

The one was now the world's hero, the other a retired Captain of the Line.

Nelson was thinking as his eyes dwelt upon his friend,

"Just the same."

The Parson,

"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 pa.s.sion. 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 G.o.d'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 Bronte: 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.

"Ten minutes since I saw it all." He lifted a dreadful eye. "It was _BLAZED_ upon me in a flash of lightning." His voice had the hollow m.u.f.fled sound of a man in a nightmare. "I saw myself: not the man the world is looking to, but plain Horatio Nelson--the sinner."

The confession, shuddering forth from the lips of the great seaman, sprang the horror in the other's heart.

"There, there!" he croaked. "There, there, Nelson!"

"Honours, Orders, Westminster Abbey, and the world's cheers are nothing,"

came the nightmare voice. "_That_ remains."

The Parson collected himself and cleared his throat.

"We all make mistakes, Nelson," he said gruffly. "Everybody stumbles, but no man need lie in the mud."

"I must," cried the other hoa.r.s.ely. "I must--in honour. Honour!"

he cried, throwing back his head with terrible laughter. "Nelson's honour!--O, Joy, you knew me as I was: you see me as I am. _You_ can judge. Is it not _hideous_ that it should come to this?--that men should _sn.i.g.g.e.r_ when Nelson and honour are coupled together."

The tears rolled down the Parson's face.

"Ah, my dear fellow," he kept on saying, patting the other's back, "my dear, dear fellow."

"I have been hiding from my G.o.d all these years--and to-day He found me!"

sobbed the voice upon his shoulder. "O, He is just--terribly just. He knows no mercy--none."

"None _here_" murmured the Parson. "_There_ there's plenty for all."

Nelson lifted a blurred face.

"You think that?"

"I'm sure of it," st.u.r.dily. "And I know all about that sort of thing now, you know. I'm a parson."

Nelson held the other off.

"Are you a parson?"

"Yes, sir," a thought defiantly. "And why not?"

His heat brought no twinkle to the other's one wet eye.

The nightmare was pa.s.sing: Nelson was drifting away into dreams.

"My father's a parson," he mused, as one talking to himself. "If I hadn't gone to sea at twelve, I think I should have been. Nelson and religion!--it sounds strange. Yet I always wished to give all to G.o.d."

"You have," cried the Parson fiercely. "Who dares say you've not?"

"I do," said Nelson, dreaming.

"And what would have come to G.o.d's world but for you?" shouted the Parson. "Why, swamped by a pack of rackety French atheists."

Nelson seemed not to hear.

"_What is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world, and lose himself_?" he whispered.

The Parson gathered the other in his arms.

"Nelson," he said with tender sternness, "if you've wronged the Almighty, you must make Him amends."

"How, Harry?" came the voice from his shoulder.

"Why," said the Parson with a grave smile, "you must arise and smite His enemies."

Slowly Nelson composed himself. A great calm swept over him.