"Yes," she said, "sometimes, when we are on land, yet even then I have never parted from my husband.""But you need to be fond of music and balls and fetes.""His voice is music for me; and for fetes, I devise new toilettes for him to see. When he likes my dress, it is as if all the world admired me. Simply for that reason I keep the diamonds and jewels, the precious things, the flowers and masterpieces of art that he heaps upon me, saying, 'Helene, as you live out of the world, I will have the world come to you.' But for that I would fling them all overboard.""But there are others on board, wild, reckless men whose passions--""I understand, father," she said smiling. "Do not fear for me. Never was empress encompassed with more observance than I. The men are very superstitious; they look upon me as a sort of tutelary genius, the luck of the vessel. But /he/ is their god; they worship him. Once, and once only, one of the crew showed disrespect, mere words," she added, laughing; "but before Victor knew of it, the others flung the offender overboard, although I forgave him. They love me as their good angel; Inurse them when they are ill; several times I have been so fortunate as to save a life, by constant care such as a woman can give. Poor fellows, they are giants, but they are children at the same time.""And when there is fighting overhead?"
"I am used to it now; I quaked for fear during the first engagement, but never since.--I am used to such peril, and--I am your daughter,"she said; "I love it."
"But how if he should fall?"
"I should die with him."
"And your children?"
"They are children of the sea and of danger; they share the life of their parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We have but one life, our names are written on the same page of the book of Fate, one skiff bears us and our fortunes, and we know it.""Do you so love him that he is more to you than all beside?""All beside?" echoed she. "Let us leave that mystery alone. Yet stay!
there is this dear little one--well, this too is /he/," and straining Abel to her in a tight clasp, she set eager kisses on his cheeks and hair.
"But I can never forget that he has just drowned nine men!" exclaimed the General.
"There was no help for it, doubtless," she said, "for he is generous and humane. He sheds as little blood as may be, and only in the interests of the little world which he defends, and the sacred cause for which he is fighting. Talk to him about anything that seems to you to be wrong, and he will convince you, you will see.""There was that crime of his," muttered the General to himself.
"But how if that crime was a virtue?" she asked, with cold dignity.
"How if man's justice had failed to avenge a great wrong?""But a private revenge!" exclaimed her father.
"But what is hell," she cried, "but a revenge through all eternity for the wrong done in a little day?""Ah! you are lost! He has bewitched and perverted you. You are talking wildly.""Stay with us one day, father, and if you will but listen to him, and see him, you will love him.""Helene, France lies only a few leagues away," he said gravely.
Helene trembled; then she went to the porthole and pointed to the savannas of green water spreading far and wide.
"There lies my country," she said, tapping the carpet with her foot.
"But are you not coming with me to see your mother and your sister and brothers?""Oh! yes," she cried, with tears in her voice, "if /he/ is willing, if he will come with me.""So," the General said sternly, "you have neither country nor kin now, Helene?""I am his wife," she answered proudly, and there was something very noble in her tone. "This is the first happiness in seven years that has not come to me through him," she said--then, as she caught her father's hand and kissed it--"and this is the first word of reproach that I have heard.""And your conscience?"
"My conscience; he is my conscience!" she cried, trembling from head to foot. "Here he is! Even in the thick of a fight I can tell his footstep among all the others on deck," she cried.
A sudden crimson flushed her cheeks and glowed in her features, her eyes lighted up, her complexion changed to velvet whiteness, there was joy and love in every fibre, in the blue veins, in the unconscious trembling of her whole frame. That quiver of the sensitive plant softened the General.
It was as she had said. The captain came in, sat down in an easy-chair, took up his oldest boy, and began to play with him. There was a moment's silence, for the General's deep musing had grown vague and dreamy, and the daintily furnished cabin and the playing children seemed like a nest of halcyons, floating on the waves, between sky and sea, safe in the protection of this man who steered his way amid the perils of war and tempest, as other heads of household guide those in their care among the hazards of common life. He gazed admiringly at Helene--a dreamlike vision of some sea goddess, gracious in her loveliness, rich in happiness; all the treasures about her grown poor in comparison with the wealth of her nature, paling before the brightness of her eyes, the indefinable romance expressed in her and her surroundings.
The strangeness of the situation took the General by surprise; the ideas of ordinary life were thrown into confusion by this lofty passion and reasoning. Chill and narrow social conventions faded away before this picture. All these things the old soldier felt, and saw no less how impossible it was that his daughter should give up so wide a life, a life so variously rich, filled to the full with such passionate love. And Helene had tasted danger without shrinking; how could she return to the pretty stage, the superficial circumscribed life of society?
It was the captain who broke the silence at last.
"Am I in the way?" he asked, looking at his wife.
"No," said the General, answering for her. "Helene has told me all. Isee that she is lost to us--"