“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.