"Give me leave," interrupted Juliet, looking every way to avoid his eyes; "to deliver my message. Miss Joddrel--"
"When we begin," cried Harleigh, eagerly, "upon the unhappy Elinor, she must absorb us; let me, then, first--"
"I must be heard, Sir," said Juliet, with more firmness, "or I must be gone!--"
"You must be heard, then, undoubtedly!" he cried, with a smile, and offering her a chair, "for you must not be gone!"
Juliet declined being seated, but delivered, nearly in the words that she had received it, her message.
Harleigh looked pained and distressed, yet impatient, as he listened.
"How," he cried, "can I argue with her? The false exaltation of her ideas, the effervescence of her restless imagination, place her above, or below, whatever argument, or reason can offer to her consideration.
Her own creed is settled--not by investigation into its merits, not by reflection upon its justice, but by an impulsive preference, in the persuasion that such a creed leaves her mistress of her destiny."
"Ah, do not resist her!" cried Juliet. "If there is any good to be done--do it! and without delay!"
"It is not you I can resist!" he tenderly answered, "if deliberately it is your opinion I should comply. But her peculiar character, her extraordinary principles, and the strange situation into which she has cast herself, give her, for the moment, advantages difficult, nay dangerous to combat. Unawed by religion, of which she is ignorant; unmoved by appearances, to which she is indifferent; she utters all that occurs to an imagination inflamed by pa.s.sion, disordered by disappointment, and fearless because hopeless, with a courage from which she has banished every species of restraint: and with a spirit of ridicule, that so largely pervades her whole character, as to burst forth through all her sufferings, to mix derision with all her sorrows, and to preponderate even over her pa.s.sions! Reason and argument appear to her but as marks for dashing eloquence or sportive mockery.
Nevertheless, if, by striking at every thing, daringly, impetuously, unthinkingly, she start some sudden doubt; demand some impossible explanation; or ask some humanly unanswerable question; she will conclude herself victorious; and be more lost than ever to all that is right, from added false confidence in all that is wrong."
"If so, the conference were, indeed, better avoided," said Juliet with sadness; "yet--as it is not the sacred truth of revealed religion that she means to canva.s.s; as it is merely the previous question, of the possibility, or impossibility, according to her notions, of a future state for mankind, which she desires to discuss; I do not quite see the danger of answering the doubts, or refuting the a.s.sertions, that may lead her afterwards, to an investigation so important to her future welfare. If she would consult with a clergyman, it were certainly preferable; but that will be a point no longer difficult to gain, when once you have convinced her, upon her own terms of controversy, that you yourself have a firm belief in immortality."
"The attempt shall surely be made," said Harleigh, "if you think such a result, as casting her into more reverend hands, may ensue. If I have fled all controversy with her, from the time that she has publicly proclaimed her religious infidelity, it has by no means been from disgust; an unbeliever is simply an object of pity; for who is so deplorably without resource in sickness or calamity?--those two common occupiers of half our existence! No; if I have fled all voluntary intercourse with her, it has only been that her total contempt of the world, has forced me to take upon myself the charge of public opinion for us both. While I considered her as the future wife of my brother, I frankly contested whatever I thought wrong in her notions. The wildness of her character, the eccentricity of her ideas, and the violence of all her feelings; with her extraordinary understanding--parts, I ought to say; for understanding implies rather what is solid than brilliant;--joined to the goodness of her heart, and the generosity, frankness, and openness of her nature, excited at once an anxiety for my brother, and an interest for herself, that gave occasion to the most affectionate animadversion on my part, and produced alternate defence or concession on hers. But her disdain of flattery, or even of civil acquiescence, made my freedom, opposed to the courteous complaisance which my brother deemed due to his situation of her humble servant, strike her in a point of view ... that has been unhappy for us all three! Yet this was a circ.u.mstance which I had never suspected,--for, where no wish is met, remark often sleeps;--and I had been wholly un.o.bservant, till you--"
Called from the deep interest with which she had involuntarily listened to the relation of his connection with Elinor, by this sudden transition to herself, Juliet started; but he went on.
"Till you were an inmate of the same house! till I saw her strange consternation, when she found me conversing with you; her rising injustice when, with the respect and admiration which you inspired, I mentioned you; her restless vigilance to interrupt whatever communication I attempted to have with you; her sudden fits of profound yet watchful taciturnity, when I saw you in her presence;--"
"I may tell her," interrupted Juliet, disturbed, "that you will wait upon her according to her request?"
"When you," cried he, smiling, "are her messenger, she must not expect quite so quick, quite so categorical an answer! I must first--"
"On the contrary, her impatience will be insupportable if I do not relieve it immediately."
She would have opened the door, but, preventing her, "Can you indeed believe," he cried, with vivacity; "is it possible you can believe, that, having once caught a ray of light, to illumine and cheer the dread and nearly impervious darkness, that so long and so blackly overclouded all my prospects, I can consent, can endure to be cast again into desolate obscurity?"
Juliet, blushing, and conscious of his allusion to her reception of him in the church yard, for which, without naming Sir Lyell Sycamore, she knew not how to account, again protested that she must not be detained.
Still, however, half reproachfully, half laughingly, stopping her, "And is it thus," he cried, "that you summon me to Brighthelmstone,--only to mock my obedience, and disdain to hear me?"
"I, Sir?--I, summon you?"
"Nay, see my credentials!"
He presented to her the following note, written in an evidently feigned hand:
"If Mr Harleigh will take a ramble to the church-yard upon the Hill, at Brighthelmstone, next Thursday morning, at five o"clock, he will there meet a female fellow-traveller, now in the greatest distress, who solicits his advice and a.s.sistance, to extricate her from her present intolerable abode."
Deeply colouring, "And could Mr Harleigh," she cried, "even for a moment believe,--suppose,--"
He interrupted her, with an air of tender respect. "No; I did not, indeed, dare believe, dare suppose that an honour, a trust such as might be implied by an appeal like this, came from you! Yet for you I was sure it was meant to pa.s.s; and to discover by whom it was devised, and for what purpose, irresistibly drew me hither, though with full conviction of imposition. I came, however, pre-determined to watch around your dwelling, at the appointed hour, ere I repaired to the bidden place. But what was my agitation when I thought I saw you! I doubted my senses. I retreated; I hung back; your face was shaded by your head-dress;--yet your air,--your walk,--was it possible I could be deceived?
Nevertheless, I resolved not to speak, nor to approach you, till I saw whether you proceeded to the church-yard. I was by no means free from suspicion of some new stratagem of Elinor; for, fatigued with concealment, I was then publicly at my house upon Bagshot Heath, where the note had reached me. Yet her distance from Brighthelmstone for so early an hour, joined to intelligence which I had received some time ago,--for you will not imagine that the period which I spend without seeing, I spend also without hearing of you?--that you had been observed,--and more than once,--at that early hour, in the church-yard--"
"True!" cried Juliet, eagerly, "at that hour I have frequently met, or accompanied, a friend, a beloved friend! thither; and, in her name, I had even then, when I saw you, been deluded: not for a walk; a ramble; not upon any party of pleasure; but to visit a little tomb, which holds the regretted remains of the darling and only child of that dear, unhappy friend!"
She wept. Harleigh, extremely touched, said, "You have, then, a friend here?--Is it,--may I ask?--is it the person you so earnestly sought upon your arrival?--Is your anxiety relieved?--your embarra.s.sment?--your suspence?--your cruel distress?--Will you not give me, at length, some little satisfaction? Can you wonder that my forbearance is worn out?--Can my impatience offend you?--If I press to know your situation, it is but with the desire to partake it!--If I solicit to hear your name--it is but with the hope ... that you will suffer me to change it!"
He would have taken her hand, but, drawing back, and wiping her eyes, though irresistibly touched, "Offend?" she repeated; "Oh far,--far!...
but why will you recur to a subject that ought so long since to have been exploded?--while another,--an essential one, calls for all my attention?--The last packet which you left with me, you must suffer me instantly to return; the first,--the first--" She stammered, coloured, and then added, "The first,--I am shocked to own,--I must defer returning yet a little longer!"
"Defer?" ardently repeated Harleigh. "Ah! why not condescend to think, at least, another language, if not to speak it? Why not antic.i.p.ate, in kind idea, at least, the happy period,--for me! when I may be permitted to consider as included, and mutual in our destinies, whatever hitherto--"
"Oh hold!--Oh Mr Harleigh!" interrupted Juliet, in a voice of anguish.
"Let no errour, no misconstruction, of this terrible sort,--no inference, no expectation, thus wide from all possible reality, add to my various misfortunes the misery of remorse!"
"Remorse?--Gracious powers! What can you mean?"
"That I have committed the most dreadful of mistakes,--a mistake that I ought never to forgive myself, if, in the relief from immediate perplexity, which I ventured to owe to a momentary, and, I own, an intentionally unacknowledged, usage of some of the notes which you forced into my possession, I have given rise to a belief,--to an idea,--to--"
She hesitated, and blushed so violently, that she could not finish her phrase; but Harleigh appeared thunderstruck, and was wholly silent. She looked down, abashed, and added, "The instant, by any possible means,--by work, by toil, by labour,--nothing will be too severe,--all will be light and easy,--that can rectify,--that--"
She could not proceed; and Harleigh, somewhat recovered by the view of her confusion, gently, though reproachfully, said, "All, then, will be preferable to the slightest, smallest trust in me?--And is this from abhorrence?--or do you deem me so ungenerous as to believe that I should take unworthy advantage of being permitted to offer you even the most trivial service?"
"No, no, oh, no!" with quickness cried Juliet; "but the more generous you may be, the more readily you may imagine--"
She stopt, at a loss how to finish.
"That you would be generous, too?" cried Harleigh, revived and smiling.
She could not refrain from a smile herself, but hastily added, "My conduct must be liable to no inference of any sort. Adieu, Sir. I will deliver you the packet in Miss Joddrel"s room."
Her hand was upon the lock, but his foot, fixed firmly against the door, impeded its being opened, while he exclaimed, "I cannot part with you thus! You must clear this terrific obscurity, that threatens to involve me, once more, in the horrours of excruciating suspense!--Why that cruel expression of displeasure? Can you think that the moment of hope,--however brief, however unintentional, however accidental,--can ever be obliterated from my thoughts? that my existence, to whatever term it may be lengthened, will ever out-live the precious remembrance that you have called me your destined protector?--your guardian angel?"
He could add no more; a mortal paleness overspread the face of Juliet, who, letting go the lock of the door, sunk upon a chair, faintly ejaculating, "Was I not yet sufficiently miserable?"
Penetrated with sorrow, and struck with alarm, Harleigh looked at her in silence; but when again he sought to take her hand, shrinking from his touch, though regarding him with an expression that supplicated rather than commanded forbearance; "If you would not kill me, Mr Harleigh," she cried, "you will relinquish this terrible perseverance!"
"Relinquish?" he repeated, "What now? Now, that all delicacy for this wild, eccentric, though so generous Elinor is at an end? that she has, herself, annulled your engagement? Relinquish, now, the hopes so long pursued,--so difficultly caught? No, I swear to you--"
Juliet arose. "Oh hold, Mr Harleigh!" she cried; "recollect yourself a moment! I lament if I have, involuntarily, caused you any transient mistake; yet, do me the justice to reflect, that I have never cast my destiny upon that of Miss Joddrel. No decision, therefore, of hers can make any change in mine."
She again put her hand upon the lock of the door.
Harleigh fixt upon her his eyes, which spoke the severest disturbance, while, in tremulous accents, he uttered, "And can you leave me thus, to wasting despondence?--and with this cold, chilling, blighting composure?--Is it from pitiless apathy, which incapacitates for judging of torments which it does not experience?--O no! Those eyes that so often glisten with the most touching sensibility,--those cheeks that so beautifully mantle with the varying dies of quick transition of sentiment,--that mouth, which so expressively plays in harmony with every word,--nay, every thought,--all, all announce a heart where every virtue is seconded and softened by every feeling!--a mind alive to the quickest sensations, yet invigorated with the ablest understanding! a soul of angelic purity!--"
Some sound from the pa.s.sage made him suddenly stop, and remove his foot; while the hand of Juliet dropt from the lock. They were both silent, and both, affrighted, stood suspended; till Juliet, shocked at the impropriety of such a situation, forced herself to open the door,--at the other side of which, looking more dead than alive, stood Elinor, leaning upon her sister.
"I began to think," she cried, in a hollow tone, "that you were eloped!--and determining to trust to no messenger, I came myself." She then endeavoured to call forth a smile; but it visited so unwillingly features nearly distorted by internal agony, that it gave a cast almost ghastly to her countenance.
"Why, Harleigh," she cried, "should you thus shun me? Have I not given back her plighted faith to Ellis? Yet I am not ignorant how tired you must be of those old thread-bare topics, bowls, daggers, poignards, and bodkins: but they have had their reign, and are now dethroned. What remains is plain, common, stupid rationality. I wish to converse with you, Albert, only as a casuist; and upon a point of conscience which you alone can settle. For this world, and for all that belongs to it, all, with me, is utterly over! I have neither care nor interest left in it; and I have no belief that there is any other. I am very composedly ready, therefore, to take my last nap. I merely wish to learn, before I return to my torpid ignorance, whether it can be a fact, that you, Harleigh, you! believe in a future state for mortal man? And I engage you by your friendship,--which I still prize above all things! and by your honour, which you, I know, prize in the same manner, to answer me this question, instantly and categorically."