So, even while thinking of Maharbal with a softened regret—for he was scarcely more to her than a dream of years long gone by—she allowed herself the almost unknown luxury of being happy. And the happiness came, not from any sense of satisfaction at a realised ambition, nor from the feeling of joy that is experienced in the attainment of a long-desired love, but simply from the relief obtained after long battlings in stormy waters. Now the guest and not the prisoner of Rome, she day after day enjoyed her calm repose, and, while fervently thanking the gods for her relief from the degrading atmosphere of Philip’s court, did not weary her mind with anxious forebodings or misgivings for the future. She thought, it is true, of Scipio, and thought of him frequently, but it was more in admiration of his nobility of soul than with the ardent passion of a lover.
That passion, indeed, he had inspired years ago, but it had been in spite of herself, and she had known how to do her duty to her absent lover in repressing it. Now she felt that she loved him indeed, and deeply, but the affection which she felt in her inmost womanhood was, she was aware, more like that very love of a sister which she had formerly professed for him, than that more thrilling love of mutual passion which she knew they had both experienced in bygone days.
The moderated nature of her sensations, however, did not trouble her; on the contrary, their very moderation was a part of the relief of mind which she now experienced. She loved Scipio in a pure way, and she longed to see him and to tell him her deep and great admiration for the grandeur of his soul; the other feeling might come back again later, on meeting again. If so, she would welcome its return gladly, for she felt that Scipio deserved something more at her hands than mere sisterly love; but in the meantime it suited her wearied brain to think about him, as of all other things, tranquilly. For her past had in very sooth been stormy enough under all its aspects, from its very commencement as a child with her father in scenes of war; as a maiden, in her mad and unreasoning passion for Maharbal and the grief of separation from him; then later during the bloody and terrible sieges of New Carthage and Syracuse; and last, but by no means least, the terrible humiliation endured in the court of the Macedonian king.
Elissa was now no longer a girl, and, as she closed her eyes and thought dreamily of all her past, she realised that for nothing on earth would she live over again the terrible years that had rolled over her head since she had changed from an inexperienced maiden to an experienced woman, whose life was far too highly filled with incident for anything approaching to real happiness to find a home within her breast. But she was happy now at length for a season, after all her warrings and wanderings, and, realising this fact, she wished that the peaceful voyage might never come to an end.
Cleandra, in the meantime, was adapting herself to circumstances as usual, and was happy too. For, forgetting her first husband, Imlico the Carthaginian noble, whom she had taken as a mere means to an end—to escape from slavery to wit; forgetting also her second husband, the Roman flag-captain Ascanius, whom she had taken for a similar reason, she had now for the first time in her life fallen deeply and ardently in love. And this time her love was, she well knew, as ardently and truly returned by Marcus Æmilius, the youngest of the Roman ambassadors, whom King Philip had rightly designated as the handsomest man of his time.
Thus Cleandra looked forward to the time when Elissa should be united to Scipio with pleasant anticipations of herself, upon the same occasion, becoming once more a bride, and this time a bride entirely from choice, not from necessity. Meanwhile, as there was a band of musicians on board the young ambassador’s ship, consisting of minstrels and dancing girls, the evenings passed merrily with song and dance. Thus the time sped gaily enough.
The ships, after passing through the Grecian islands, hit off the southernmost coast of the Peloponnesus but did not touch anywhere. But once the western side of the lowermost parts of Greece had been gained, a strong western breeze set in, on account of which the land was not only closely hugged, but frequent stoppages were made at various ports or inlets. For the inhabitants of the western coast were, if not exactly friendly to Rome, afraid of Rome, and, above all, the name of Philip was abhorred in those parts. Therefore, frequent landings were made in convenient creeks and inlets, and, to pass the time, when the wind was too strong without, the seine nets would be got out, and a morning or afternoon employed innocently in fishing beneath the shadow of a headland in some land-locked bay.
It was delightful to Elissa now, her armour all laid aside, clad in modest raiment given to her by the minstrel girls on board, to join in these fishing parties. She loved also to watch the sea-gulls grouped on the rocks, or the nimble-winged flying-fishes springing like a covey of partridges from the foam. What, in her present softened mood, when all relating to war and death was distasteful, grieved her, however, was that even to capture the innocent fishes meant death to some of the creatures created by the gods, while she soon learned that when the flying-fishes sprang into the air, it was only because a group of porpoises was pursuing them. Moreover, she observed that, especially when near the coast, the ospreys or fish-eagles, swooping down from their eyries, would often seize them in their talons. Thus, if they escaped by taking flight from one danger in the sea, they, nevertheless, succumbed to another danger in the air. And whenever Elissa allowed herself to think at all, a thing that she, with all her will, did her utmost to avoid, she vaguely hoped that her fate might not be that of a flying-fish springing from one danger, that it knew of close at hand in the water, to another, that it knew not of, in the air.
But she realised, from thus observing the birds and the fishes, that, even in the calmest scenes of nature, the eternal laws of death and destruction are ever present and in force; that there is nought that liveth but must die, and die, more frequently than not, by a cruel death. All this only strengthened all the more her serious resolve to do all within her power to save unhappy humanity from further suffering, and for the future to work in the interests of peace alone.
Having made up her mind firmly on this point, she determined further that never again would she raise her own hand in warfare, that never would she wear armour more.