Chapter 10

During Falkner’s visits to Zante, Elizabeth had been led to remark the faithful attentions of his chief follower, an Albanian Greek. This man had complained to his young mistress of the recklessness with which Falkner exposed himself—of the incredible fatigue he underwent—and his belief that he must ere long fall a victim to his disdain of safety and repose; which, while it augmented the admiration his courage excited, was yet not called for by the circumstances of the times. He would have been termed rash and fool-hardy, but that he maintained a dignified composure throughout, joined to military skill and fertility of resource; and while contempt of life led him invariably to select the post of danger for himself, he was sedulous to preserve the lives of those under his command. His early life had familiarized him with the practices of war. He was a valuable officer; kind to his men, and careful to supply their wants, while he contended for no vain distinctions; and was ready, on all occasions, to undertake such duties as others shrunk from, as leading to certain death.

Elizabeth listened to Vasili’s account of his hairbreadth escapes, his toils, and desperate valour, with tearful eyes and an aching heart. “Oh! that I could attach him to life!” she thought. She never complained to him, nor persuaded him to alter his desperate purpose, but redoubled her affectionate attentions. When he left her, after a hurried visit, she did not beseech him to preserve himself; but her tearful eyes, the agony with which she returned his parting embrace, her despondent attitude as his bark left the shore; and, when he returned, her eager joy—her eye lighted up with thankful love—all bespoke emotions that needed no other interpreter, and which often made him half shrink from acting up to the belief he had arrived at, that he ought to die, and that he could only escape worse and ignominious evils by a present and honourable death.

As time passed on—as by the arrival of the forces from Egypt the warfare grew more keen and perilous—as Vasili renewed the sad tale of his perils at each visit, with some added story of lately and narrowly escaped peril—fear began to make too large and engrossing a portion of her daily thoughts. She ceased to take in the ideas as she read—her needle dropped from her hand—and, as she played, the music brought streams of tears from her eyes, to think of the scene of desolation and suffering in which she felt that she should soon be called upon to take a part. There was no help or hope, and she must early learn the woman’s first and hardest lesson, to bear in silence the advance of an evil which might be avoided, but for the unconquerable will of another. Almost she could have called her father cruel, had not the remembrance of the misery that drove him to desperation inspired pity, instead of selfish resentment.

He had passed a few days with her, and the intercourse they held had been more intimate and more affectionate than ever. As she grew older, her mind, enriched by cultivation, and developed by the ardour of her attachment, grew more on an equality with his experienced one, than could have been the case in mere childhood. They did not take the usual position of father and child—the instructer and instructed—the commander and the obedient—

“They talked with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true,
A pair of friends.”

And the inequality which made her depend on him, and caused him to regard her as the creature who was to prolong his existence, as it were, beyond the grave, into which he believed himself to be descending, gave a touch of something melancholy to their sympathy, without which, in this shadowy world, nothing seems beautiful and enduring.

He left her; and his little bark, under press of sail, sped merrily through the waves. She stood to watch—her heart warmed by the recollection of his fervent affection—his attentive kindness. He had ever been brave and generous; but now he had become so sympathizing and gentle, that she hoped that the time was not far off when moral courage would spring from that personal hardihood which is at once so glorious and so fearful. “God shield you, my father!” she thought, “God preserve you, my more than father, for happier thoughts and better days! For the full enjoyment of, and control over, those splendid qualities with which Nature has gifted you!”