"He will come back,--her father,--my enemy! I have waited for him from youth to age. I have seen him in my dreams, and in visions. I am with him continually,--we talk together. At first, cringingly and softly, I lead him to recall the past, to speak of the dead wife,--the lost child,--her baby ways and words. I lure him on till imagination has fired his love and given life and vividness to his memory. Then I whisper,--She lives! she is near! in a moment he shall behold her! And while his heart beats and he trembles, I bring her forth in her beauty. Take her! your daughter! the one devil on earth; but devils shall spring like grass in the track of her footsteps!"
The voice had worked itself into a frenzy, and, forgetting caution, had crazily exposed itself. Its owner was probably some poor lunatic, subject to fits of madness. But Helwyse was full of scorn and anger, born of that bitterest disappointment which admits not even the poor consolation of having worthily aspired. He had been duped,--and by the cobwebs of a madman's brain! He broke into a short laugh, harsh to the ear, and answering to no mirthful impulse.
"So! you are the hero of your story? You have brooded all your life over a crazy scheme of stabbing a father through his child, until you have become as blind as you are vicious! As for the girl, you may have made her ignorant and stupid, or even idiotic; but that she should become queen of Hell or anything of that kind--"
He stopped, for his unseen companion was evidently beyond hearing him. The man seemed to be actually struggling in a fit,--gasping and choking. It was a piteous business,--not less piteous than revolting. But Helwyse felt no pity,--only ugly, hateful, unrelenting anger, needing not much stirring to blaze forth in fearful passion. Where now were his wise saws,--his philosophic indifference? Self-respect is the pith of such supports; which being gone, the supports fail.
"My music,--my music!" gasped the voice; "my music, or I shall die!"
"Die? Yes, it were well you should die. You cumber the earth! Shall I do it?" Helwyse muttered to his heart,--"merely as a means of culture!"
Perhaps it was said only in a mood of sardonic jesting. The next moment, no doubt, Balder Helwyse would have retired to his cabin, leaving the voice of darkness forever. But at that moment the hurried flash of a lantern on the captain's bridge fell full on the young man's face and shoulders, gleaming in his eyes, and lighting up the masses of yellow hair and mighty beard. He was standing with one hand resting on the taffrail. The dim halo of the fog, folding him about, made him look like a spirit.