Chapter III (2)

After a while, however, his naturally strong intellect and characteristic audacity led him to discard the idea of supernatural influence in the appalling vision, which had now twice so cruelly disturbed him. Still, so great had been the suffering and torture of his mind during the conflict of the sleeping body and the sleepless intellect, that he actually dreaded the return of slumber, lest that dread phantom should return with it; and he therefore exerted himself to keep awake, and to arm his mind against the insidious stealing on of sleep, from very fear of what should follow.

But the very efforts which he made to banish the inclination, wearied the mind, and induced what he would most avoid; and within an hour he was again unconscious of all external sights and sounds, again terribly alive to those inward sensations which had already terrified him almost beyond endurance.

This time the trance was shorter, but from the symptoms which appeared on his features, fiercer and stronger than before; nor, as before, when he awoke, did the impression pass away which had been made on him before his eyes were opened. No; as he started up erect, and gazed wildly, scarce as yet half awake, around him, the first thing that met, or seemed to meet, his staring eyes, was a gray, misty shadow, standing relieved by a dark mass of gloom in the farthest angle of the chamber. Gradually, as he stared at it with a fascinated gaze, which, had it been to save his life, he could not have withdrawn, the shape, if shape it were, drew nearer, nearer, with a slow, gliding, ghastly motion.

The moon had by this time arisen, and cast a feeble, ineffectual light through the mass of tangled foliage which curtained the large diamond-paned casements of the cottage, streaming in a dim, misty ray across the centre of the chamber. Directly in the middle of this pallid halo, as if it had been a silver glory, paused, or appeared to pause, that thin transparent form—so bodiless, indeed, it seemed, that the outlines of the things which stood beyond it, were visible, as if seen through a gauzy curtain. A cloud passed over the moon’s face, and all was gloom; yet still the boy’s eyes _felt_ the presence of that disembodied visitant, which they could now no longer distinguish in the darkness.

At this moment, as if to add a real terror to that which, even if unreal, needed no addition, the cat, which hitherto had been sleeping undisturbedly by the warm ashes on the hearth, uttered an unusual plaintive cry, most unlike to the natural note of her species, whether of pleasure or of anger, and rushed at two or three long bounds, to the bed on which the boy was sitting up in voiceless horror. Her eyes glared in the darkness, like coals of livid fire, her bristles were set up like the quills of the porcupine, her tail was outspread, till it almost resembled a fox’s brush.

The cloud drifted onward, and the moon shone out brighter than before; and there he still saw, that tall white shape, clearer, distincter, stronger than when he first beheld it. The cat cowered down upon the pillow by his side, with a low wailing cry of terror, her back, bristling in wrath but now, was humbly lowered, dread of something unnatural had quelled all her savage instincts.

Clearer and clearer waxed the vision, and now he might mark the delicate symmetrical proportions of the figure, and now the pale white outlines of the lovely face. It _was_ Theresa Allan. Yet the fair features were set in a sort of rigid cataleptic horror, full of dread, full of agony and consternation; and the blue eyes glared, fixed and glassy, without speculation; and right in the centre of the brow there glowed, like a sanguine star, a great spot of gore.

The thing seemed to raise its arm, and point with a gesture of majestic menace, right toward the terrified beholder. Then the white lips were parted with a slow circular distortion, showing the pearly teeth within, and——if a voice came forth from those ghastly lips, Jasper St. Aubyn knew it not, for he had sunk back on his pillow—if, indeed, he had ever, as he believed to the day of his death, raised himself up from it—in a deep trance, from which he passed into a dead, heavy, dreamless stupor, which continued undisturbed until the sun was high in the heavens, and the whole household were afoot, and busied about their usual avocations.

In the meantime, she whose image, whether in truth it was _an eidolon_, or merely the idea of a diseased mind and preoccupied spirit, had been so busy during the hours of darkness, had awakened all refreshed by light and innocent slumbers, with the first peep of day, and arising from her couch had descended into the garden, still half enveloped in the dewy vapors of the summer night, half glimmering in the slant radiance of the new-risen sun.

She was the first at her appointment, for Durzil had not yet made his appearance, and she walked to and fro awaiting him, among the flowery thickets and sweet scented shrubberies all bathed in the copious night-dews, half wondering, half-guessing, what it could be that he should so earnestly desire to communicate. And as she walked, she considered with herself all that had occurred during the last three days, and the more she considered, the less was she able to comprehend the workings of her own mind, or to explain to herself wherefore it was that she could not divest herself of the idea that the crisis of her life, the fate of her heart was at hand.

That she had rejected Durzil’s proffered love, his honest, manly love, she knew that she ought not to regret, for she felt surely that she could not love him in return as he ought, as he deserved to be loved; and yet she did almost regret it. Then she began to ask herself why she did not, why she _could_ not love him, endowed eminently as he was with many high and noble qualities; and she was soon answered, when she considered how far he fell short of her standard, in mental and intellectual culture, in all that pertained to the secret sympathies of the heart, to the kindred tastes and sentiments, to that community of hopes and wishes, which, under the head of _eadem velle atque nolle_, the Roman philosophical historian has declared to be the sole base of true friendship, might he not better have said of true love.

Thence by an easy and natural transition the girl’s thoughts turned to the young stranger—to his magnificent person and striking intellectual beauty—to his singular and original character, so audacious, so full of fiery and rebellious self-will, so confident in his own powers, so daring, almost insolent toward man, and yet, at the same time, so fraught with gentle and romantic fancies, so rapt by romance or poetry, so liable to all swift impressions of the senses, so humble, yet with so proud and self-arrogating a humility toward woman.

She thought of the tones of his beautifully modulated voice, of the expression of his deep, clear, gray eye; she remembered how the one had melted, as it were, almost timorously in her ear, how the other had dwelt almost boldly on her face, yet with a boldness which seemed meant almost as homage.

She mused on these things; and then paused to reflect how helplessly and deathfully he had lain at her feet, when he was drawn forth from that deep red whirlpool; and how so sickly those fine eyes swam when she first beheld them. How small a thing would have extinguished, and forever, the faint spark of life which then feebly fluttered in his bosom; how child-like he had yielded himself to her ministration, and with how piteous yet grateful an expression he had acknowledged, when he awoke from his first trance-like stupor, midway as it were between life and death, the gentleness of her protection.

Most true it is, that pity is akin to love; where pity, as is seldom the case from woman toward man, can exist apart from something approaching to contempt; where it is called forth by the consequences neither of physical nor mental weakness. Still more is it the province and the part of woman to love whom they have protected.

With both sexes, I believe that to have conferred, rather than to have received kindness—to be owed rather than to owe gratitude—is conducive to the growth of kindly feeling, of friendship, of affection, love! But with a true woman, to have been dependent on her for support, to have looked up into her eyes for aid on the sick-bed, for sympathy in mortal sorrow, to have revived by her nursing, to have been consoled by her comforting—these are the truest and most direct key to her affections.

Theresa thought of all these things, and as she did so, her bosom heaved almost unconsciously a sigh, and a tear rose unbidden to her eye. She almost loved Jasper St. Aubyn.

Again, the recollection of his boldness on the previous evening, of his half forcible seizure of her hand, of the kiss he had so daringly imprinted on her soft fingers, of the too meaning words which he had addressed to her, and of the tone, which conveyed even more of consciousness and confidence than the words themselves, all rushed at once upon her mind; and, though she was alone, she started, and her face crimsoned at the mere memory of what she half felt as an indignity.

“And could he think me,” she murmured to herself, “so light, so vain, so easy to be won, that he dare treat me thus at almost a first interview? or was it but the rashness, the imprudence, the buoyancy of extreme youth, inspired by sudden love, and encouraged by his own headstrong character.” She paused a moment, and then said almost aloud, “Oh, no, no, I will not believe it.”

“And what will you not believe, Theresa?” said a clear, firm voice, close behind her, “what is it that you are so energetically determined not to believe, my pretty cousin?”

She started, not well pleased that even Durzil should have thus, as it were, stolen upon her privacy, and overheard what was intended for no mortal ear. Theresa was as guileless as any being of mortal mould may be; but even the most artless woman cannot be altogether free from some touch of instinctive artifice—that innocent and gentle guile is to woman what nature has bestowed on all, even the humblest of its creatures, her true weapon of defence, her shield against the brute tyranny of man. And Theresa was a woman. She replied, therefore, without an instant’s hesitation, although her voice did falter somewhat, and her cheeks burn, as she spoke—

“That you are angry with me, cousin Durzil.” But then, as she felt his cold, clear, dark eye how piercingly it dwelt upon her features, reading, or striving to read, her very soul, she continued, seeing at once the necessity of placing him on the defensive, so as to turn the tide of aggressive warfare, “but _I_ am angry with _you_, I assure you; nor do I think it at all like you, Durzil, or at all like a true cavalier, as you pretend to be, first to keep a lady waiting for you, I don’t know how long, here alone, and then to creep upon her, like an Indian, or a spy, and surprise what little secrets she might be turning over in her own mind. You must have trodden lightly on purpose, or I should have heard your step. I did not look for this at your hand, cousin Durzil.”

He still gazed at her with the same dark, fixed, piercing glance, without answering her a word; and, although conscious of no wrong, she met his gaze with her calm, candid, truthful eye, she could not endure his suspicious look, but was fluttered, and blushed deeply, and was so much embarrassed, that had not pride and anger come to her aid, she would have burst into tears. But they did come to her aid, and she cried with a quivering voice and a flashing eye—

“For what do you look at me so, Durzil? I do not like it—I will not bear it! You have no right to treat me thus! it is not kind, nor courteous, nor even manly! If it be to brow-beat me, and tyrannize over me, that you asked me to meet you here, I could have thanked you to spare me the request. But I shall leave you to yourself, and return home; and so, good-morrow to you, and better breeding, and a better heart, too, cousin Durzil!”

But though she said she was going, she made no movement to do so, but hesitated, waiting for his answer.

“You must be greatly changed, Theresa,” he said bitterly, “to take offence at so slight a cause, or to speak to me in such a tone. But you _are_ greatly changed, and there’s an end of it.”

“I am not changed at all,” replied the girl, still chafing at the recollection of that scrutinizing eye, which she perhaps felt the more, because conscious that her own reply had not been perfectly sincere. “But I do not allow your right to pry meanly into my secret thoughts, or to catechise me concerning my words, or to accuse me of falsehood, when I answer you.”

“Accuse you of falsehood, Theresa! Who ever dreamed of doing so?”

“Your eye did so, sir,” she replied. “When I told you that I was determined ‘not to believe that you were angry with me,’ you fixed your glance upon me with the expression of a pedagogue, who having caught a child lying would terrify it into truth. I am no child, I assure you, Durzil, nor are you _yet_ my master. Think as you may about it.”

It was now Durzil’s turn to be confused, for he could not deny that she had construed the meaning of his look aright; and would not, so proud was he and so resolute, either deny or apologize for what was certainly an act of rudeness.

After a moment’s pause, however, he looked up at her from under downcast eyelids, with a look of defiance mingled with distrust, and answered bluntly,

“I do not believe that _was_ your meaning, or that you were thinking about me at all.”

“And what if it were not? Am I bound, I pray you, to be thinking of nothing but you? I must have little enough to think of, if it were so.”

“You might at least have told me so much frankly.”

“I thank you, cousin Durzil,” she made answer, more proudly, more firmly than ever he had heard her speak before. “I thank you, for teaching me a lesson, though neither very kindly, nor exactly as a generous gentleman should teach a lady. But you are perfectly correct in your surmises, sir. I was _not_ thinking of you at all; no more, sir, than if you were not in existence, and if I answered you, as I did, sir, _falsely_—yes! _falsely_ is the word!—it is because, in the first place, you had no right to ask me the question you did, and, in the second, because I did not choose to answer it! Now, cousin, allow _me_ to teach you something—for you have something yet to learn, wise as you are, about us women. If you ask a lady unmannerly questions, hereafter, and she turn them off by a flippant joke, or an unmeaning _falsehood_, understand that _you_ have been very rude, and that she does not wish to be so likewise, by rebuking your impertinence. Now, do you comprehend me?”

“Perfectly, madam, perfectly. You have made marvelous strides of late, upon my honor! Yesterday morning an unsophisticated country maiden—this morning a courtly, quick-witted, manœuvring, fine lady! God send you, much good of the change, though I doubt it. I can see all, read all, plainly enough now—poor Durzil Bras-de-fer is not high enough, I trow, for my dainty lady! Perchance, when he is farther off, he may be better liked, and more needed. At all events, I did not look for this at your hands, Theresa, on the last morning, too, that we shall spend together for so long a time.”

Angry as she was, and indignant at the dictatorial manner he had assumed toward her, these last words disarmed her in a moment. A tear rose to her eyes, and she held out her hand to him kindly.

“You are right, Durzil,” she said, “and I was wrong to be so angry. But you vexed me, and wounded me by your manner. I am sorry; I ought to have remembered that you were going to leave us, and that you have some cause to be grieved and irritable. Pardon me, Durzil, and forget what I said hastily. We must not quarrel, for we have no friends save one another, and my dear old father.”

But Durzil’s was no placable mind, nor one that could divest itself readily of a preconceived idea. “Oh!” he replied, “for that, fair young ladies never lack friends. For every old one they cast off they win two new ones. See, if it be not so, Theresa. Is it not so with you?”

She looked at him reproachfully, but softly, and then burst into tears. “You are ungenerous,” she said, “ungenerous. But all men, I suppose, are alike in this—that they can feel no friendship for a woman. So long as they hope for her love, all is submission on their part, and humility, and gentleness, and lip-service—once they cannot win that, all is bitterness and persecution. I did not look for this at _your_ hand! But _I_ will not quarrel with you, Durzil. I dealt frankly with you yester morning; I have dealt affectionately with you ever; I will deal tenderly and forgivingly with you now. I only wish that you had not sought this interview with me, the only object of which appears to have been the embittering the last hours of our intercourse, and the endeavoring to wring and wound my heart. But I—”

“If you had dealt frankly with me,” he interrupted her, very angrily, “you would have told me honestly that you loved another.”

“Loved another! What do you mean? What other?”

So evident was the truth, the sincerity of her astonishment, that jealousy itself was rebuked and put to silence in the young man’s bosom; and he endeavored to avoid or change the subject. But the womanly indignation of the fair girl was now awakened; her pride had been touched; her delicacy wounded; her sensibilities availed in the tenderest point.

“Leave me!” she said, after a little pause, during which she, in her turn gazing upon him, now bewildered and abashed, with eyes of serene wonder, not all unmingled with contempt—“Nay! not another word—leave me—begone! You are not worthy of a woman’s love—you are not worthy to be treated or regarded as a man. Leave me, I say, and trouble me no more. Poor, weak, mean-spirited, vain, jealous, and ungenerous, begone! You know—no man knows better—the falsehood of the last words you have spoken. No man knows better their unfeelingness, their ungenerous cruelty. But if I had—if I had loved another—in what does that concern you? In what am I responsible to you for my likings or dislikings? Once and for all be it said, I love you not—should not love you, were you the only one of your sex on the face of God’s earth—and I pray God to help and protect the woman who shall love you—if ever you be loved of woman, which I for one believe not—for she shall love the veriest tyrant that ever tortured a fond heart, under the plea of loving.”

“I go,” he replied. “I am answered, once and for all. I go, and may _you_ never need my aid, my forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness!” she exclaimed, with a contemptuous glance. “Forgiveness! I know not what _you_ have to forgive! But you should rather pray that I _may_ have need of them; then may _you_ have the pleasure of refusing me at my need.”

“Ah! it is thus you think of me. It is time, then, that I should leave you. Fare you well, Theresa.”

“There is no need for farewells at present. The day is early yet; and I trust still to see your temper changed before you set forth on your journey. It would grieve my father sorely that you should leave us thus.”

“He will not know how I leave you. He will see me no more for years—perhaps never!”

“What do you mean?”

“That I shall mount my horse within this half hour, and return no more until I shall have twice crossed the Atlantic. So fare you well, Theresa.”

“Fare you well, Durzil, if it must be so. And God bless you, and send you a better mind. You will be sorry for this one day. There is my hand, fare you well; and rest assured of this, return when you may, you will find me the same Theresa.”

He took her hand, and wrung it hard. “Farewell,” he said. “Farewell; and God grant that when I do return, I find you the wife, and not the mistress, of Jasper St. Aubyn.”

Ungenerous and bitter to the last, he winged the shaft at random, which he hoped would pierce the deepest, which he trusted would prevent the consummation he most dreaded—that she _should be_ the wife of the boy whom he had saved, whom he now hated.

The other contingency, at which he had hinted basely, unmanly, brutally, he knew to be impossible—but he knew also, that the surmise would gall her beyond endurance. That, that was the cruel, the unworthy object of the last words Durzil Bras-de-fer ever exchanged in this world with Theresa Allan.

He turned on his heel, and, without looking back once, strode through the garden, with all his better feelings lost and swallowed up in bitterness and hatred; entered his own apartment, and there wrote a few lines to his uncle, to the effect that in order to avoid the pain of a parting, and the sorrows of a last adieu, he had judged it for the wisest to depart suddenly and unawares; and that he should not return to Widecomb until his voyage should be ended.

Then, leaving the house, where he had passed so many a happy hour, in hot and passionate resentment, he mounted his horse and rode away at a hard gallop across the hills toward Hexwerthy and Plymouth.

The last words he uttered had gone to Theresa’s heart like a death-shot. She did not speak, or even sigh, as she heard them, but pressed her hand hard on her breast, and fell speechless and motionless on the dewy greensward.

He, engrossed by his selfish rage, and deafened to the sound of her fall by the beatings of his own hard heart, stalked off unconscious what had befallen her; and she lay there, insensible, until the servant girl, missing her at the breakfast hour, found her there cold, and, as at first she believed, lifeless.

She soon revived, indeed, from the swoon; but the excitement and agitation of that scene brought on a slow, lingering fever; and weeks elapsed ere she again left her chamber. When she did quit it, the fresh green leaves of summer had put on their sere and yellow hue, the autumn flowers were fast losing their last brilliancy, the hoar-frosts lay white, in the early mornings, over the turf walks of her garden, ice had been seen already on the great pool above the fords of Widecomb, and every thing gave notice that the dreary days of winter were approaching, and even now at hand.

The northwest winds howled long and hollow over the open hills and heathery wolds around Widecomb Manor, and ever as their wild melancholy wail fell on the ears of Theresa, as she sat by her now lonely hearth, they awoke a thought of him, the playmate of her happy childhood, from whom she had parted, not as friends and playmates should part, and who was now ploughing the far Atlantic, perhaps never to return.

A shadow had fallen upon her brow; a gloom upon her young and happy life.

And where was he who unconsciously, though not perhaps unintentionally, had been the cause of the cloud which had arisen, and whence that shadow, that gloom? Where was Jasper St. Aubyn?