When two are young, and at sea, and in love, and the world is beautiful
and bright, it is joyous and wonderful to drift thoughtlessly with the
tide, and rise and fall with the waves. Thus Paul Zalenska and Opal
Ledoux spent that most delightful of voyages on the Lusitania. They were
not often alone. They did not need to be. Their intimacy had at one
bound reached that point when every word and movement teemed with tender
significance and suggestion. Their first note had reached such a high
measure that all the succeeding days followed at concert pitch. It was a
voyage of discovery. Each day brought forth revelations of some new
trait of character--each unfolding that particular something which the
other had always admired.
And so their intimacy grew.
Paul Verdayne saw and smiled. He was glad to see the Boy enjoying
himself. He knew his chances for that sort of thing were all too
pathetically few.
Mr. Ledoux looked on, troubled and perplexed, but he saw no chance, and
indeed no real reason, for interfering.
The Count de Roannes was irritated, at times even provoked, but he kept
his thoughts to himself, hiding his annoyance, and his secret explosions
of "_Au diable!_" beneath his usual urbanity.
There was nothing on the surface to indicate more than the customary
familiarity of young people thrown together for a time, and yet no one
could fail to realize the undercurrent of emotion below the gaiety of
the daily ripple of amusement and pleasurable excitement and converse.
They read together, they exchanged experiences of travel, they discussed
literature, music, art and the stage, with the enthusiastic partisanship
of zealous youth. They talked of life, with its shade and shadow, its
heights and depths of meaning, and altogether became very well
acquainted. Each day anew, they discovered an unusual congeniality in
thoughts and opinions. They shared in a large measure the same exalted
outlook upon life--the same lofty ambitions and dreams.
And the more Paul learned of the character of this strange girl, the
more he felt that she was the one woman in the world for him. To be
sure, he had known that, subconsciously, the first time he had heard her
voice. Now he knew it by force of reason as well, and he cursed the fate
that denied him the right to declare himself her lover and claim her
before the world.
One thing that impressed Paul about the girl was the generous charity
with which she viewed the frailties of human nature, her sincere pity
for all forms of human weakness and defeat, her utter freedom from petty
malice or spite. Rail at life and its hypocrisies, as she often did, she
yet felt the tragedy in its pitiful short-comings, and looked with the
eye of real compassion upon its sins and its sinners, condoning as far
as possible the fault she must have in her very heart abhorred.
"We all make mistakes," she would say, when someone retailed a bit of
scandal. "No human being is perfect, nor within a thousand miles of
perfection. What right then have we to condemn any fellow-creature for
his sins, when we break just as important laws in some other direction?
It's common hypocrisy to say, 'We never could have done this terrible
thing!' and draw our mantle of self-righteousness closely about us lest
it become contaminated. Perhaps we couldn't! Why? Because our
temptations do not happen to lie in that particular direction, that's
all! But we are all law-breakers; not one keeps the Ten Commandments to
the letter--not one! Attack us on our own weak point and see how quickly
we run up the flag of surrender--and perhaps the poor sinner we denounce
for his guilt would scorn just as bitterly to give in to the weakness
that gets the best of us. _Sin is sin_, and one defect is as hideous as
another. He who breaks one part of the code of morality and
righteousness is as guilty--just exactly as guilty--as he who breaks
another. Isn't the first commandment as binding as the other nine? And
how many of us do not break that every day we live?"
And there was the whole creed of Opal Ledoux.
But as intimate as she and the Boy had become, they yet knew
comparatively little of each other's lives.
Opal guessed that the Boy was of rank, and bound to some definite course
of action for political reasons. This much she had gained from odds and
ends of conversation. But beyond that, she had no idea who he was, nor
whence he came. She would not have been a woman had she not been
curious--and as I have said before, Opal Ledoux was, every inch of her
five feet, a woman--but she never allowed herself to wax inquisitive.
As for the Boy, he knew there was some evil hovering with threatening
wings over the sunshine of the girl's young life--some shadow she tried
to forget, but could not put aside--and he grew to associate this shadow
with the continued presence of the French Count, and his intimate air of
authority. Paul knew not why he should thus connect these two, but
nevertheless the impression grew that in some way de Roannes exercised a
sinister influence over the life of the girl he loved.
He hated the Count. He resented every look that those dissolute eyes
flashed at the girl, and he noticed many. He saw Opal wince sometimes,
and then turn pale. Yet she did not resent the offense.
But Paul did.
"Such a look from a man like that is the grossest insult to any woman,"
he thought, writhing in secret rage. "How can she permit it? If she were
my--my _sister_, I'd shoot him if he once dared to turn his damned eyes
in her direction!"
And thus matters stood throughout the brief voyage. Paul and Opal,
though conscious of the double barrier between them, tried to forget its
existence for the moment, and, at intervals, succeeded admirably.
For were they not in the spring-time of youth, and in love?
And Paul Zalenska talked to this girl as he had never talked to anyone
before--not even Paul Verdayne!
She brought out the latent best in him. She developed in him a quickness
of perception, a depth of thought and emotion, a facility of speech
which he had never known. She stimulated every faculty, and gave him new
incentive--a new and firmer resolve to aspire and fight for all that he
held dear.
"I always feel," he said to Opal, once, "as though my soul stood always
at attention, awaiting the inevitable command of Fate! All Nature seems
to tell me at times that there is a purpose in my living, a work for me
to do, and I feel so thoroughly _alive_--so ready to listen to the call
of duty--and to obey!"
"A dreamer!" she laughed, "as wild a dreamer as I!"
"Why not?" he returned. "All great deeds are born of dreams! It was a
dreamer who found this America you are so loyal to! And who knows but
that I too may find my world?"
"And a fatalist, too!"
"Why, of course! Everyone is, to a greater or a less extent, though
most dare not admit it!"
"But yesterday you said--what _did_ you say, Paul, about the power of
the human will over environment and fate?"
"I don't remember. That was yesterday. I'm not the same to-day, at all.
And to-morrow I may be quite different."
"Behold the consistency of man. But Fate, Paul--what makes Fate? I have
always been taught to believe that the world is what we make it!"
"And it is true, too, that in a way we may make the world what we will,
each creating it anew for himself, after his own pattern--but after all,
Opal, that is Fate. For what we _are_, we put into these worlds of ours,
and what we are is what our ancestors have made us--and that is what I
understand by destiny."
"Ah, Paul, you have so many noble theories of life."
His boyish face grew troubled and perplexed.
"I _thought_ I had, Opal--till I knew you! Now I do not know! Fate seems
to have taken a hand in the game and my theories are cast aside like
worthless cards. I begin to see more clearly that we cannot always
choose our paths."
"Can one ever, Paul?"
"Perhaps not! Once I believed implicitly in the omnipotence of the human
will to make life just what one wished. Now"--and he searched her
eyes--"I know better."
"Unlucky Opal, to cross your path!" she sighed. "Are you superstitious,
Paul? Do you know that opals bring bad luck to those who come beneath
the spell of their influence?"
"I'll risk the bad luck, Opal!"
And she smiled.
And he thought as he looked at her, how well she understood him! What an
inspiration would her love have brought to such a life as he meant his
to be! What a Récamier or du Barry she would have made, with her
_piquante_, captivating face, her dark, lustrous, compelling eyes, her
significant gestures, which despite many wayward words and phrases,
expressed only lofty and majestic thoughts! Her whole regal little
body, with its irresistible power and charm, was so far beyond most
women! She was life and truth and ambition incarnate! She was the spirit
of dreams and the breath of idealism and the very soul of love and
longing.
Would she feel insulted, he wondered, had she known he had dared to
compare her, even in his own thoughts, with a king's mistress? He meant
no insult--far from it! But would she have understood it had she known?
Paul fancied that she would.
"They may not have been moral, those women," he thought, "that is, what
the world calls 'moral' in the present day, but they possessed power,
marvellous power, over men and kingdoms. Opal Ledoux was created to
exert power--her very breath is full of force and vitality!"
"Yes," he repeated aloud after due deliberation, "I'll risk the bad luck
if you'll be good tome!"
"Am I not?"
"Not always."
"Well, I will be to-day. See! I have a new book--a sad little
love-tale, they say--just the thing for two to read at sea," and with a
heightened color she began to read.
She had pulled her deck-chair forward, until she sat in a flood of
sunshine, and the bright rays, falling on her mass of rich brown hair,
heightened all the little glints of red-gold till they looked like
living bits of flame. Oh the vitality of that hair! the intense glow of
those eyes in whose depths the flame-like glitter was reflected as the
voice, too, caught fire from the fervid lines!
Soon the passion and charm of the poem cast its spell over them both as
they followed the fate of the unhappy lovers through the heart-ache of
their evanescent dream.
Their eyes met with a quick thrill of understanding.
"It is--Fate, again," Paul whispered. "Read on, Opal!"
She read and again they looked, and again they understood.
"I cannot read any more of it," she faltered, a real fear in her voice.
"Let us put it away."
"No, no!" he pleaded. "It's true--too true. Read on, please, dear!"
"I cannot, Paul. It is too sad!"
"Then let me read it, Opal, and you can listen!"
And he took the book gently from her hand, and read until the sun was
smiling its farewell to the laughing waters.
* * * * *
That evening a strong wind was playing havoc with the waves, and the
fury of the maddened spray was beating a fierce accompaniment to their
hearts.
"How I love the wind," said Opal. "More than all else in Nature I love
it, I think, whatever its mood may be. I never knew why--probably
because I, too, am capricious and full of changing moods. If it is
tender and caressing, I respond to its appeal; if it is boisterous and
wild, I grow reckless and rash in sympathy; and when it is fierce and
passionate, I feel my blood rush within me. I am certainly a child of
the wind!"
"Let us hope you will never experience a cyclone," said the Count,
drily. "It might be disastrous!"
"True, it might," said Opal, and she did not smile. "I echo your kind
hope, Count de Roannes."
And the Boy looked, and listened, and loved!