Stamping on the floor, with anger in her eyes, she tore twice in twain the scroll that Mago had brought her from Maharbal, and dashed it to the ground. Then casting the withered roses to the floor beside the fluttering pieces of papyrus, Elissa spurned them with her foot. How glorious the outraged girl looked in her righteous anger! But then, a revulsion of feeling setting in, she suddenly cast herself upon her sympathetic uncle’s breast in a flood of tears, while he vainly sought to console her. After this, she broke from him again, picked up the scattered fragments, tenderly picked up also the crushed and shrivelled rose leaves, and clutching them to her beating bosom, fled from the apartment. Poor Elissa! accustomed as she was to have her own way in everything, her pride had indeed been sadly hurt; but love was after all still the lord of all.
It must be owned that hers was a terrible and trying position. Maid but no maid, wife but no wife, ruling over New Carthage and all the surrounding territory in Southern Spain with princely powers, with all the might of Carthage to support her in her authority, yet she was powerless to have her will. Working, too, as she ever was, for the good of her country, she was yet condemned by an adverse fate to gain no good herself, the one thing that she desired in this world to make life worth living being denied to her.
First it had been her father who had, for his own reasons, torn her lover from her arms just as she had learned to know what love was; and now it was that noble young soldier, the flower of the army, Maharbal himself, who had preferred, or so it seemed, the undying fame of military glory, which he was earning in Italy, to her loving arms. It has been said by one, herself a loving woman, in an analysis of the sexes, that absence makes man but not woman indifferent, the beloved object gradually fading from the former’s mind. “For,” she writes, “men are not made like women, and in time they do forget, although they do not think at the first that they will, ever. But I have closely studied them, and have discovered that, in their relations to each other, women can live on a past, but men always need an immediate future to look forward to, or else everything is lost in a mist of oblivion. To women ‘have beens’ are enough for ever, whilst men require to have their five senses constantly occupied on the people they love, or else soon grow cooler, and in time cold. With a man, his love is deep and deeply intense for a little while; with a woman, it is not so deep or intense at the time, but spreads over her whole life.”
With reference to the above analysis, which certainly is true in parts as regards the world in general, and yet which seems far too sweeping when applied to individual cases, Elissa was one of those whom absence did not render indifferent; she was also one of those women whose love had spread over her life. But it could by no means be said of her that she found that the “have beens” were enough for ever, nor that her love had not been so deep and intense as Maharbal’s at the time. On the contrary, it was not only equally deep and intense, but far more violent and incapable of being kept under control. Elissa had not therefore been satisfied with merely living on the past, but had been ardently looking forward to a future when her five senses might be again gratified by the presence of her lover. Her disappointment and depression were all the greater, and her state of “accablement” became more utter, as the loving words and expressions conveyed to her in her lover’s letter only made her desire his personal presence the more intensely.
As with the pieced-together letter in her hand, and the faded roses by her side, she lay silently weeping upon her luxurious couch, she felt as if she had been struck with blows, so limp, so crushed was she. But after a while, proud woman that she was, she called all her pride, all her courage, to her aid, and rising from her couch rejoined her uncle.
Her beautiful face was very pale, and there were deep violet rings under her eyes, when, laying her bejewelled fingers upon Mago’s arm, she addressed him as follows:
“Mine uncle Mago, it is not good for a girl to be so much alone as I have been for years past. Neither father nor mother have I ever had with me, nor even thou, mine uncle Mago, nor yet have I mine uncle Hasdrubal. Until I took my friend Sophonisba to live with me, what society have I had, save that of the empty-headed Princess Cœcilia, a woman utterly devoid of intellect, whose only ideas are vapid flirtations with anything or anybody—which foolish promiscuity maketh her somewhat a danger in the city, by the way—and how best to take care of her complexion:
“No wonder, then, oh mine uncle! that—neglected thus, and thrown so utterly upon mine own resources—I have dwelt far too much in my mind upon my lover Maharbal; for lover only he is to me henceforth; I will continue no longer the farce of calling him my husband. Had he been my husband, or desired to be my husband, he would have come to me now. Therefore is he but my lover and nought else, and, my lover having failed me, I will stay here to brood in New Carthage no longer, but will accompany thee for a while to the war against the Romans, with this thine army that thou hast brought. I shall presently take thee all over the defences of the town, and thou wilt see that I have not hitherto betrayed my trust, for all is in order. And thou, mine uncle, shalt this day present unto me one of the superior officers of thy force, a capable man, to accompany us round the walls, and be also present at a review of my troops, which I intend to hold in thine honour. To such a one will I delegate mine authority here during mine absence, and thou shalt ratify such appointment. Were it possible for me to know whither in Italy to seek my father Hannibal, it is to him I would now proceed, and it would perhaps be more fitting that I should do so, but for one reason. That reason thou canst easily fathom; it exists in the presence of Maharbal with my father’s army. For ’twould seem to all that I were pursuing him, or that since he would not come to me I had gone to him, and that shall never be said of Elissa, daughter of Hannibal. Now, mine uncle, I have said: I accompany thee if thou wilt but have me?” and she threw an arm around his neck caressingly.
“Ay, my dear niece, right gladly will I have thee with me, and do even as thou hast said. For ’tis true that thou hast been neglected hitherto, and life is short, especially in times of war, and blood is thicker than water. I would right fain have thee with me, save for the danger that thou mayst run of thy life. Say, if I take thee, wilt thou promise me to be very careful of thine own safety, my pretty one, my gallant soldier’s daughter?” And gently the uncle stroked the dark tresses of the young woman, whose pale but determined face so near his own shone with nobility, courage, and determination.
She embraced Mago, and smiled softly but somewhat ironically.