[Footnote 8: Dryden.]
Harleigh tried to smile, tried to rally, tried to divert the question; all in vain; Elinor became but more urgent, and more disordered. "O Harleigh!" she cried, "is it too much to ask this one mark of your confidence, for a creature who has cast her whole destiny at your feet?
Speak!--if you would not devote me to distraction! Speak!--if you would not consign me to immediate delirium!"
"And what," cried he, trembling at her vehemence, "would you have me say?"
"That it is not Elinor whom you despise--but another whom you love."
"Elinor! are you mad?"
"No, Harleigh, no!--but I am wild with anguish to dive into the full depth of my disgrace; to learn whether it were inevitable, from the very nature of things,--from personal antipathy,--gloss it over as you will with esteem, regard, and professions;--or whether you had found that you, also, had a soul, before mine was laid open to you. No evasion--no delay!" continued she, with augmenting impetuosity; "you have promised to grant my boon,--speak, Harleigh, speak!--was it my direful fate, or your insuperable antipathy?"
"It was surely not antipathy!" cried he, in a tone the most soothing; yet with a look affrighted, and unconscious, till he had spoken, of the inference to which his words might be liable.
"I thank you!" cried she, fervently, "Harleigh, I thank you! This, at least, is n.o.ble; this is treating me with distinction, this is honouring me with trust. It abates the irritating tinglings of mortified pride; it persuades me I am the victim of misfortune, not of contempt."
Suddenly, then, turning to Ellis, whose eyes, during the whole scene, had seemed rivetted to the floor, she expressively added, "I ask not the object!"
Harleigh breathed hard, yet kept his face in an opposite direction, and endeavoured to look as if he did not understand her meaning. Ellis commanded her features to remain unmoved; but her complexion was not under the same controul: frequent blushes crossed her cheeks, which, though they died away almost as soon as they were born, vanished only to re-appear; evincing all the consciousness that she struggled to suppress.
A pause ensued, to Harleigh unspeakably painful, and to Ellis indescribably distressing; during which Elinor fell into a profound reverie, from which, after a few minutes, wildly starting, "Harleigh,"
she cried, "is your wedding-day fixed?"
"My wedding-day?" he repeated, with a forced smile, "Must not my wedding itself be fixed first?"
"And it is not fixed?--Does it depend upon Ellis?"
He looked palpably disconcerted; while Ellis, hastily raising her head, exclaimed, "Upon me, Madam? no, indeed! I am completely and every way out of the question."
"Of you," said Elinor, with severity, "I mean not to make any enquiry!
You are an adept in the occult sciences; and such I venture not to encounter. But you, Harleigh, will you, also, practise disguise? and fall so in love with mystery, as to lose your n.o.bler nature, in a blind, infatuated admiration of the marvellous and obscure?"
Ellis resentfully reddened; but her cheeks were pale to those of Harleigh. Neither of them, however, spoke; and Elinor continued.
"I cannot, Harleigh, be deceived, and I will not be trifled with. When you came over to fetch me from France; when the fatal name of sister gave me a right to interrogate you, I frankly asked the state of your heart, and you unhesitatingly told me that it was wholly free. Since that period, whom have you seen, whom noticed, except Ellis! Ellis!
Ellis! From the first moment that you have beheld her, she has seemed the mistress of your destiny, the arbitress of your will. My boon, then, Harleigh, my boon! without a moment"s further delay! Appease the raging ferment in my veins; clear away every surmize; and generously, honestly say "tis Ellis!--or it is another, and not Ellis, I prefer to you!"
"Elinor! Elinor!" cried Harleigh, in a universal tremour, "it is I that you will make mad!" while Ellis, not daring to draw upon herself, again, the rebuke which might follow a single declaiming word, rose, and turning from them both, stood facing the window.
"It is surely then Ellis! what you will not, Harleigh, avow, is precisely what you proclaim--it is surely Ellis!"
Ellis opened the window, and leant out her head; Harleigh, clapping his hand upon his crimsoned forehead, walked with hasty steps round the little apartment.
Losing now all self-command, and wringing her hands, in a transport of ungovernable anguish, "Oh, Harleigh! Harleigh!" Elinor cried, "to what a chimera you have given your heart! to an existence unintelligible, a character unfathomable, a creature of imagination, though visible! O, can you believe she will ever love you as Elinor loves? with the warmth, with the truth, with the tenderness, with the choice? can she show herself as disinterested? can she prove herself as devoted?--"
"She aims, Madam, at no rivalry!" said Ellis, gravely, and returning to her seat: while Harleigh, tortured between resentment and pity, stood still; without venturing to look up or reply.
"Rivalry?" repeated Elinor, with high disdain: "No! upon what species of compet.i.tion could rivalry be formed, between Elinor, and a compound of cold caution, and selfish prudence? Oh, Harleigh! how is it you thus can love all you were wont to scorn? double dealing, false appearances, and lurking disguise! without a family she dare claim, without a story she dare tell, without a name she dare avow!"
A deep sigh, which now burst from Ellis, terminated the conflict between indignation and compa.s.sion in Harleigh, who raised his eyes to meet those of Elinor, with an expression of undisguised displeasure.
"You are angry?" she cried, clasping her hands, with forced and terrible joy; "you are angry, and I am thankful for the lesson. I meant not to have lingered thus; my design was to have been abrupt and n.o.ble."
Looking at him, then, with uncontrolled emotion, "If ever man deserved the sacrifice of a pure heart," she continued, ""tis you, Harleigh, you!
and mine, from the period it first became conscious of its devotion to you, has felt that it could not survive the cert.i.tude of your union with another. All else, of slight, of failure, of inadequate pretensions, might be borne; for where neither party is happy, misery is not aggravated by contrast, nor mortification by comparison. But to become the object of insolent pity to the happy!--to make a part of a rival"s blessings, by being offered up at the shrine of her superiority--No, Harleigh, no! such abas.e.m.e.nt is not for Elinor. And what is the charm of this wretched machine of clay, that can pay for sustaining its burthen under similar disgrace? Let those who prize support it. For me,--my gla.s.s is run,--my cup is full,--I die!"
"Die?" repeated Ellis, with a faint scream, while Harleigh looked petrified with horrour.
"Die, yes!" answered Elinor, with a smile triumphant though ghastly; "or sleep! call it which you will! so animation be over, so feeling be past, so my soul no longer linger under the leaden oppression of disappointment; under sickness of all mortal existence; under incurable, universal disgust:--call it what you please, sleep, rest, or death; termination is all I seek."
"And is there, Elinor, no other name for what follows our earthly dissolution?" cried Harleigh, with a shuddering frown. "What say you if we call it immortality?"
"Will you preach to me?" cried she, her eyes darting fire; "will you bid me look forward to yet another life, when this, short as it is deemed, I find insupportable? Ah, Harleigh! Harleigh!" her eyes suffusing with sudden tenderness; "were I your"s--I might wish indeed to be immortal!"
Harleigh was extremely affected: he approached her, took her hand, and soothingly said, "My dear Elinor, compose your spirits, exert your strength of mind, and suffer us to discuss these subjects at some length."
"No, Harleigh; I must not trust myself to your fascinations! How do I know but they might bewitch me out of my reason, and entangle me, again, in those antique superst.i.tions which make misery so cowardly? No, Harleigh! the star of Ellis has prevailed, and I sink beneath its influence. Else, only sometimes to see you, to hear of you, to watch you, and to think of you always, I would still live, nay, feel joy in life; for still my imagination would gift you, ultimately, with sensibility to my regard. But I antic.i.p.ate the union which I see to be inevitable, and I spare my senses the shock which I feel would demolish them.--Harleigh!--dearest Harleigh, Adieu!"
A paleness like that of death overspread her face.
"What is it," cried Harleigh, inexpressibly alarmed, "what is it Elinor means?"
"To re-conquer, by the courage of my death, the esteem I may leave forfeited by my jealousy, my envy, my littleness in life! You only could have corrected my errours; you, by your ascendance over my feelings, might have refined them into virtues. Oh, Harleigh! weigh not alone my imperfections when you recollect my attachment! but remember that I have loved you so as woman never loved!"
Her voice now faultered, and she shook so violently that she could not support herself. She put her hand gently upon the arm of Harleigh, and, gliding nearly behind him, leant upon his shoulder. He would have spoken words of comfort, but she seemed incapable of hearing him.
"Farewell!" she cried, "Harleigh! Never will I live to see Ellis your"s!--Farewell!--a long farewell!"
Precipitately she then opened the s.h.a.green case, and was drawing out its contents, when Ellis, darting forward, caught her arm, and screamed, rather than articulated, "Ellis will never be his!--Forbear!
Forbear!--Ellis never will be his!"
The astonished Harleigh, who, hitherto, had rigorously avoided meeting the eyes of Ellis, now turned towards her, with an expression in which all that was not surprise was resentment; while Elinor, seeming suddenly suspended, faintly p.r.o.nounced, "Ellis--deluding Ellis!--what is it you say?"
"I am no deluder!" cried Ellis, yet more eagerly: "Rely, rely upon my plighted honour!"
Harleigh now looked utterly confounded; but Ellis only saw, and seemed only to breathe for Elinor, who recovering, as if by miracle, her complexion, her voice, and the brightness of her eyes, rapturously exclaimed, "Oh Harleigh!--Is there, then, sympathy in our fate? Do you, too, love in vain?"--And, from a change of emotion, too sudden and too mighty for the shattered state of her nerves, she sunk senseless upon the floor.
The motive to the strange protestations of Ellis was now apparent: a poniard dropt from the hand of Elinor as she fell, of which, while she spoke her farewell, Ellis had caught a glance.
Harleigh seemed himself to require the aid that he was called upon to bestow. He looked at Elinor with a mixture of compa.s.sion and horrour, and, taking possession of the poniard, "Unhappy Elinor!" he cried, "into what a chaos of errour and of crime have these fatal new systems bewildered thee!"
The revival of Elinor was almost immediate; and though, at first, she seemed to have lost the remembrance of what had happened, the sight of Ellis and Harleigh soon brought it back. She looked from one to the other, as if searching her destiny; and then, with quick impatience, though somewhat checked by shame, cried, "Ellis! have you not mocked me?"
Ellis, covered with blushes and confusion, addressing herself to Harleigh, said, "Pardon, Mr Harleigh, my seeming presumption, where no option has been offered me; and where such an option is as wide from my expectations as it would be from my desert. This terrible crisis must be my apology."
A shivering like that of an ague-fit again shook the agitated Elinor, who, ejaculating, "What farce is this?--Fool! fool! shall I thus sleepily be duped?" looked keenly around for her lost weapon.
"Duped? no, Madam," cried Ellis, in a tone impressive of veracity: "if I had the honour to be better known to Miss Joddrel, one a.s.sertion, I flatter myself, would suffice: my word is given; it has never yet been broken!"