“With a love like mine, with a hatred like mine, in the heart, one can
defy all things. The murderous climate is not going to harm me; and, if
I had six balls in my body, I should still find strength enough to come
and call you to account for what you have done to Henrietta before I
die.”
He certainly had had need of all that dauntless energy which passion
inspires to sustain him in his trials. But alas! his bodily sufferings
were as nothing in comparison with his mental anxiety. At night, while
his men were asleep, he kept awake, his heart torn with anguish, now
crushed under the thought of his helplessness, and now asking himself if
rage would not deprive him of his reason.
It was a year now since he had left Paris to go on board “The Conquest,”
a whole year.
And he had not received a single letter from Henrietta,--not one. Every
time a vessel arrived from France with despatches, his hopes revived;
and every time they were disappointed.
“Well,” he would say to himself, “I can wait for the next.” And then he
began counting the days. Then it arrived at last, this long-expected
ship, and never, never once brought a letter from Henrietta--
How could this silence be explained? What strange events could have
happened? What must he think, hope, fear?
To be chained by honor to a place a thousand leagues from the woman he
loved to distraction, to know nothing about her, her life, her actions
and her thoughts, to be reduced to such extreme wretchedness, to doubt--
Daniel would have been much less unhappy if some one had suddenly come
and told him, “Miss Ville-Handry is no more.”
Yes, less unhappy; for true love in its savage selfishness suffers less
from death than from treason. If Henrietta had died, Daniel would
have been crushed; and maybe despair would have driven him to extreme
measures; but he would have been relieved of that horrible struggle
within him, between his faith in the promises of his beloved and certain
suspicions, which caused his hair to stand on end.
But he knew that she was alive; for there was hardly a vessel coming
from France or from England which did not bring him a letter from
Maxime, or from the Countess Sarah. For Sarah insisted upon writing
to him, as if there existed a mysterious bond between them, which she
defied him to break.
“I obey,” she said, “an impulse more powerful than reason and will
alike. It is stronger than I am, stronger than all things else; I must
write to you, I cannot help it.”