“With me—does it rest with me?” she cried, joyously. “Oh! if it rests with me, you will not go at all—you will never go any more. I am always in terror while you are absent; and the west wind never blows, howling as it does over these desolate bare hills, with its mournful, moaning voice, which they say is the very sound of a spirit’s cry, but it conjures up to my mind all dread ideas of the tremendous rush and roar of the mountain billows upon some rock-bound leeward coast, as I have heard you tell by the cheerful hearth; and of stranded vessels, creaking and groaning as their huge ribs break asunder, and of corpses weltering on the ruthless waves; oh! such dread day-dreams! If it rest with me, go you shall not, Durzil, ever again to sea. And why should you? You have won fame enough, and glory and wealth more than enough to supply your wants so long as you live. Why should you go to sea again, dear Durzil?”
“I will not go again, Theresa, if such seriously be your deliberate desire.”
“If such seriously be my deliberate desire!” the fair girl repeated the words after him, with a sort of half solemn drollery. Was it the native instinct of the female heart, betraying itself in that innocent and artless creature, scarcely in years more than a child—the inborn, irrepressible coquetry of the sex, foreseeing what was about to follow from the young man’s lips, yet seeking all unconsciously to delay the avowal, to protract the uncertainty, the excitement, or was it genuine, unsuspecting innocence? “You are most singularly solemn,” she continued, “this fine morning, Durzil, wondrously serious and deliberate; and so, as you are so precise, I must, I suppose, answer you likewise in due set form. Of course, it is my desire to have the company of one whom I esteem and love, of one to whom I look up for countenance and protection, of my only relative on earth, except my dear old father, as much as I can have it, with due regard to his interests and well-being. My father is getting very old, too, and infirm; and at times I fancy that his mind wanders. I cannot fail, therefore, to perceive that he needs a more able and energetic person near him than I am. I can, moreover, see no good cause why you should persist in following so perilous and stormy a profession, unless it be that you love it. Therefore, as I have said, of course, if it rest with me to detain you, I would do so—but always under this proviso, that it were with your own good will; for I confess, dear Durzil, that I fear, if you were detained against your wish, if you still pant for the strong excitement, the stormy rapture, as I have heard you call it, of the chase, the battle, and the tempest, you never could be happy here, whatever we might do to please you. Now, Durzil, seriously and deliberately, you are answered.”
“I could be happy here. I am weary of agitation and excitement. I feel that I have erred—that the path I have taken leads not to happiness. I want tranquillity, repose of the heart, above all things—love!”
“Then do not go—then I say positively, Durzil, dear Durzil, stay with us—you can find all these here.”
“Are you sure—all of them?”
“Sure? Why, if not here in this delicious, pastoral, simple country, in this dear cottage, with its lovely garden and calm waters, where in the world should you find tranquillity, if not here, in the midst of your best friends, in the bosom of your own family, where should you look for love?”
“Theresa, there be more kinds of love than one—and that I crave is not cold, duteous, family affection.”
Now, for the first time, it seemed that the young man’s meaning broke clearly upon her mind; now a sudden and bright illumination burst upon all that seemed strange and wild and inconsistent in his conduct, in his speech, in his very silence. Unsuspected before, it was now evident to her at once that deep, overmastering passion was the cause to which she must refer all that had been for some time past to her an incomprehensible enigma in her cousin’s demeanor.
And now that she was assured, for the first time in her life, that she was really, deeply, ardently beloved—not as a pretty, childish playmate, not as an amiable and dear relative, but as herself, for herself, a lovable and lovely woman, how did the maiden’s heart respond to the great revelation?