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!"
Such was the tenour of her thoughts. Enthusiasm mingled with fond
solicitude--and thus she continued her anxious watchings. By every
opportunity she received brief letters, breathing affection, yet
containing no word of self. Sometimes a phrase occurred directing her
what to do if anything fatal occurred to him, which startled and pained
her; but there was nothing else that spoke of death--nor any allusion to
his distaste for life. Autumn was far advanced--the sounds of war were
somewhat lulled; and, except in small skirmishing parties, that met and
fought under cover of the ravines and woods, all was quiet. Elizabeth
felt less fearful than usual. She wrote to ask when Falkner would again
visit her; and he, in reply, promised so to do immediately after a
meditated attack on a small fortress, the carrying of which was of the
first import to the safe quartering of his little troop during the
winter. She read this with delight--she solaced herself with the
prospect of a speedier and longer visit than usual; with childish
thoughtlessness she forgot that the attack on the town was a work of
war, and might bring with it the fatal results of mortal struggle.
A few days after, a small, ill-looking letter was put into her hands--it
was written in Romaic, and the meaning of its illegible ciphers could
only be guessed at by a Greek. It was from Vasili--to tell her, in a few
words, that Falkner was lying in a small village, not far from the
seacoast, opposite Zante. It mentioned that he had been long suffering
from a Greek fever; and having been badly wounded in the late attack,
the combined effects of wound and malady left little hopes of recovery;
while the fatal moment was hastened by the absence of all medical
assistance--the miserable state of the village where he was lying--and
the bad air of the country around.
Elizabeth read as if in a dream--the moment, then, had come, the fatal
moment which she had often contemplated with terror, and prayed Heaven
to avert--she grew pale and trembling; but again in a moment she
recalled her presence of mind, and summoned all the resolution she had
endeavoured to store up to assist her at this extremity. She went
herself to the chief English authority in the island, and obtained an
order for a vessel to bring him off--instantly she embarked. She neither
wept nor spoke; but sitting on the deck, tearless and pale, she prayed
for speed, and that she might not find him dead. A few hours brought her
to the desired port. Here a thousand difficulties awaited her--but she
was not to be intimidated by all the threatened dangers--and only
besought the people about her to admit of no excuses for delay. She was
accompanied by an English surgeon and a few attendants. She longed to
outspeed them all, and yet she commanded herself to direct everything
that was done; nor did her heart quail when a few shot, and the cry of
the men about her, spoke of the neighbourhood of the enemy. It
proved a false alarm--the shots came from a straggling party of
Greeks--salutations were exchanged, and still she pushed on--her only
thought was--"Let me but find him alive--and then surely he will live!"
As she passed along, the sallow countenances and wasted figures of the
peasants spoke of the frightful ravages of the epidemic by which Falkner
was attacked--and the squalidness of the cabins and the filth of the
villages were sights to make her heart ache; at length they drew near
one which the guide told her was that named by Vasili. On inquiring,
they were directed down a sort of lane to a wretched dilapidated
dwelling--in the courtyard of which were a party of armed Greeks,
gathered together in a sort of ominous silence. This was the abode of
Falkner; she alighted--and in a few minutes Vasili presented
himself--his face painted with every mark of apprehension and sorrow--he
led her on. The house was desolate beyond expression--there was no
furniture, no glass in the windows--no token of human habitation beyond
the weather-stained walls. She entered the room where her father
lay--some mattresses placed on the divan were all his bed; and there was
nothing else in the room except a brazier to heat his food. Elizabeth
drew near--and gazed in awe and grief. Already he was so changed that
she could scarcely know him--his eyes sunk, his cheeks fallen, his brow
streaked with pallid hues; a ghastly shadow lay upon his face, the
apparent forerunner of death. He had scarcely strength sufficient to
raise his hand, and his voice was hollow--yet he smiled when he saw
her--and that smile, the last refuge of the soul that informs our clay,
and even sometimes survives it, was all his own; it struck her to the
heart--and her eyes were dimmed with tears while Vasili cast a wistful
glance on her--as much as to say, "I have lost hope!"
"Thank you for coming--yet you ought not to be here," hoarsely murmured
the sick man. Elizabeth kissed his hand and brow in answer--and, despite
of all her endeavours, the tears fell from her eyes on his sunken cheek;
again he smiled. "It is not so bad," he said; "do not weep, I am willing
to die! I do not suffer very much, though I am weary of life."
The surgeon was now admitted. He examined the wound, which was of a
musket bullet in his side. He dressed it, and administered some potion,
from which the patient received instant relief; and then joined the
anxious girl, who had retired to another room.
"He is in a very dangerous state," the surgeon remarked, in reply to her
anxious looks. "Nothing certain can be pronounced yet. But our first
care must be to remove him from this pestiferous place--the fever and
wound combined must destroy him. Change of air may produce an
amelioration in the former."
With all the energy which was her prominent characteristic, Elizabeth
caused a litter to be prepared, horses hired, and everything arranged so
that their journey might be commenced at daybreak. Every one went early
to rest, to enjoy some repose before the morrow's journey, except
Elizabeth; she spent the livelong night watching beside Falkner, marking
each change, tortured by the groans that escaped him in his sleep, or
the suppressed complaints that fell from his lips--by the restlessness
and fever that rendered each moment full of fate. The glimmering and
dreary light of the lamp increased even the squalid and bare appearance
of the wretched chamber in which he lay; Elizabeth gazed for a moment
from the casement to see how moved the stars--and there, without, nature
asserted herself--and it was the lovely land of Greece that met her
eyes; the southern night reigned in all its beauty--the stars hung
refulgent lamps in the transparent ether: the fire-flies darted and
wheeled among the olive groves, or rested in the myrtle hedges, flashing
intermittingly, and filling for an instant a small space around them
with fairy brightness; each form of tree, of rocky fragment, and broken
upland, lay in calm and beautiful repose; she turned to the low couch on
which lay all her hope--her idolized father; the streaked brow--the
nerveless hand--half-open eye, and hard breathing betokened a frightful
stage of weakness and suffering.
The scene brought unsought into her mind the lines of the English poet,
which so touchingly describes the desolation of Greece--blending the
idea of mortal suffering with the long-drawn calamities of that
oppressed country. The words, the lines, crowded on her memory; and a
chord was struck in her heart as she ejaculated, "No! no, not so! Not
the first day of death--not now, or ever!" As she spoke, she dissolved
in tears--and, weeping long and bitterly, she became afterward
calmer--the rest of her watch passed more peacefully. Even the patient
suffered less as night verged into morning.
At an early hour all was ready. Falkner was placed in the litter; and
the little party, gladly leaving the precincts of the miserable village,
proceeded slowly towards the seashore. Every step was replete with pain
and danger. Elizabeth was again all herself. Self-possessed and
vigilant, she seemed at once to attain years of experience. No one could
remember that it was a girl of sixteen who directed them. Hovering round
the litter of the wounded man, and pointing out how best to carry him,
so that he might suffer least--as the inequalities of the ground, the
heights to climb, and the ravines to cross, made it a task of
difficulty. Now and then the report of a musket was heard; sometimes a
Greek cap, not unoften mistaken for a turban, peered above the precipice
that overlooked the road frequent alarms were given, but she was
frightened by none. Her large eyes dilated and darkened as she looked
towards the danger pointed out--and she drew nearer the litter, as a
lonely mother might to the cradle of her child, when in the stillness of
night some ravenous beast intruded on a savage solitude; but she never
spoke, except to point out the mistakes she was the first to
perceive--or to order the men to proceed lightly, but without fear--nor
to allow their progress to be checked by vain alarms.
At length the seashore was gained, and Falkner at last placed on the
deck of the vessel, reposing after the torture which, despite every
care, the journey had inflicted. Already Elizabeth believed that he was
saved--and yet, one glance at his wan face and emaciated figure
reawakened every fear. He looked, and all around believed him to be, a
dying man.