"You do not like him!" observed Cornelius, calming down a little.
"Very much as a cousin. Not at all, otherwise."
"And you will not have him, will you, Daisy?"
He spoke with lingering doubt and uneasiness.
"I tell you I shall not have the chance," I replied impatiently. "Oh, Cornelius! will you never leave off fancying that everybody is in love with me?"
I could not help laughing as I said it.
"Yes, laugh," he said reproachfully, "laugh at me, because like the poor man of the parable told by the Prophet to the sinful King, 'I have but one little ewe lamb; I have nourished it up, it has eaten of my meat, drank of my cup, lain in my bosom, and been unto me as a daughter.' Laugh because I cannot help dreading lest the rich man's insolence should wrest her from me!"
"No, Cornelius, I shall laugh no more; but indeed you need not fear that sort of thing at all. Neither for Mr. Thornton, nor for any other member of his sex do I care, and when I say that," I added, reddening a little, "you know what I mean."
"Too well!" he replied, in a low, sad tone. "Good bye, Daisy. God bless you!"
I remained motionless with surprise and grief. He rose; Kate entered the room.
"Oh, Kate!" I cried desperately, "after all but promising to stay, he is going. Speak to him, pray speak to him!"
She shook her head and stood a little apart, looking on with quiet attention.
I silently placed myself before her brother, but he looked both sad and determined.
"You cannot have the heart to do it: you cannot!" I exclaimed, the tears running down my face as I spoke; "you cannot!"
"Daisy," he replied, in a tone of mingled pain and reproach, "where is the use of all this? If I could stay, indeed I would; but though I love you so much, that every tear you now shed seems a drop wrung from the life blood of my heart, believe me when I declare that though you should ask me to remain on your bended knees, I should still say no."
"Then I shall try!" I exclaimed, despairingly; but before I could sink down at his feet, he had caught hold of both my hands, and compelled me to remain upright. Hope forsook me.
"Cornelius," I said, weeping, "will you stay?"
"No!"
"Cornelius!" I exclaimed, more earnestly. "Will you stay?"
This time he did not answer, but his half averted face showed me a profile severe, resolute, and inexorable.
"You cannot weary me," I said again; "will you stay?"
He turned upon me pale with wrath.
"Oh! blind girl--blind to the last!" he cried, his white lips trembling.
"You ask me to stay--to stay!"
"Yes, Cornelius, again and again!"
All patience seemed to forsake him. His eyes lit, his features quivered; he grasped my hands in his with an angry force, of which he was himself unconscious.
"Come," he said, striving to be calm, "do not make me say that which I should repent. Let us part as it is--do not insist--do not provoke me to forget honour and truth."
I could see that Cornelius was angry with me; that my obstinacy provoked him beyond measure; but his wrath was the wrath of love; it could not terrify me. I even felt and found in it a perilous pleasure, that made me smile as I replied:
"But I do insist, Cornelius."
His lips parted, as if to utter some vehement reply; then he bit them with angry force, and knit his brow like one who subdues and keeps down some inward strife. Kate quietly stepped up to us.
"The knot that will not be unravelled must be cut," she said. "He will stay, Daisy, if you will be his wife."
The words seemed sent, like a quivering arrow, through my very heart.
Cornelius looked confounded at his sister, who only smiled; then he turned to me, flushed and ardent. As I stood before him, my hands still grasped in his--his face still bent over mine, half upraised--his look, overflowing with passion, reproach, love, anger, and tenderness, sank deep into mine, with a meaning that overpowered me. And yet, as if spell- bound by the strange and wonderful story thus, at once revealed to me, I could not cease to hear it. Kate had not spoken--she still spoke in words that echoed for ever. To speak myself, look away, return once more to the daily life beyond which that moment stood isolated, were not things in my power. I felt like one divided from Time by that immortal Present.
"Oh, Daisy!" vehemently exclaimed Cornelius, "how you linger! 'No' should have been uttered at once; 'yes' need not tarry so long. Speak--answer.
Must I stay or depart?"
He spoke with the feverish impatience that will not brook delay.
"Stay!" broke from me, I knew not why nor how; but with the word, my head swam; my limbs failed me; there was a chair by me, I sank down upon it.
Cornelius turned very pale, dropped my hands, and walked away without a word. Kate came to me.
"Daisy," she said, taking my hand in her own, "what is it? Are you faint?
Have this," she added, handing me the glass of wine which, at once, her brother had poured out.
"No," I replied, "water."
She gave me some. I drank it off, but it did not calm the fever which she took for faintness. I clasped my brow between my hands, to compose and concentrate thought; but my whole being--my mind, faculties, soul, body, and heart, were in tumult and insurrection. I could hear, see, feel--know nothing of that inward world of which I called myself mistress. I rose, terrified at the sudden storm which had broken on my long peace.
"Daisy, do not look so wild!" said Kate; and taking me in her arms, she wanted to make me sit down again; but I broke from her. I passed by her brother without giving him a look, ran up to my own room, and locked myself in like one pursued.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A faint streak of grey was breaking in the east, through the low and heavy clouds of night. I went up to the window, opened it, and kneeling down by it, I looked at that still dark sky, and surrendered myself to the swift current that was bearing me away.
There is a rapture in strong emotions that has subdued the strongest; a perilous charm to which the wisest have yielded. What the storm is to our senses--something that raises, appals and lifts up our very being by its sublimity and terror--the strife of the passions is to the soul. They are her elements, from whose conflicts and electric shocks she derives her strength, her greatness, the knowledge that she is. And for this, though they so often blight her fairest hopes, she loves them.
It is hard, indeed, to be ever striving against those rebellious servants--to feel torn asunder in the struggle; but sweeter is that bitter contest than a long, lifeless peace. The danger lies not so much in the chance of final subjection, as in that of learning to love the strife too well. More perilous than the sweetest music is its tumult; more endless than are all the delights of the senses, and far more intoxicating is its infinite variety. The soul, in her most blissful repose, has nothing to equal the burning charm of her delirium.
My youth had been calm as an ice-bound sea, over which sweep breezes sweet though chill, but that knows neither the storm nor the sunshine of the ardent south. And now the storm had suddenly wakened, and from northern winter, I passed to the glowing tropics. I thought not of love or passion, of bliss or torment; I felt like one seized by foaming rapids, and swept far beyond human ken, with the sound of the rushing torrent ever in my ears. I yielded to a force that would not be resisted.
"Let it," I thought, my heart beating with fearless delight; "I care not whither it sends me; let the eddies cast me adrift--or bear me safely on--I care not--this is to live!"
I strove not against the current; I sought not to know where I was, until of itself the stream flowed more calm, until its mighty voice died away in faint murmurs, and I found myself floating safe in still waters. Then I looked up, and like one who after sleeping on earth wakens in fairy- land, I beheld with trembling joy the strange and wonderful country to which I had been borne during the long slumber of a year. Cornelius loved me! it was marvellous, incredible, but a great and glorious thing for all that. He loved me! my heart swelled; my soul rose; I felt humble, exalted and blest far beyond the power of speech to render. I had no definite thought, no definite wish, but before me extended the future like an endless summer day; beneath it spread life as an enchanted region which Cornelius and I paced hand in hand, bending our steps towards that golden west where burned a sun that should never set.