The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 4 of 5)

'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 assistance, 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 pass; 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 embarrassment? – 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 anticipate, 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 passage 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.'

'Most faithfully, then, Elinor, yes! All the happiness of my present life is founded upon my belief of a life to come!'

Elinor held up her hands. 'Astonishing!' she cried. 'Can judgment and credulity, wisdom and superstition, thus jumble themselves together! And in a head so clear, so even oracular! Give me, at least, your reasons; and see that they are your own!'

Harleigh looked disturbed, but made not any answer.

The wan face of Elinor was now lighted up with hues of scarlet. 'I feel,' she cried, 'the impropriety of this intrusion; – for who, if not I, – since we all prize most what we know least, – should respect happiness? When you have finished, however, your present conference, honour me, both of you, if you please, – that the period so employed may be less wearisome to either, – with a final one up stairs. Harleigh! A final one!'

Harleigh was still silent.

A yet deeper red now dyed the whole complexion of Elinor, and she added, 'If, to-day, you are too much engaged, – to-morrow will suffice. To-day, indeed, your solemn protestations of belief, upon a subject which to me, is a chaos, – dark, – impervious, impenetrable! has given ample employment to my ideas.'

Repulsing, then, his silently offered arm, she returned, with Selina, to the chamber consigned to her by Mrs Ireton.

CHAPTER LXIV

Harleigh, confused, disconcerted, remained motionless; but when the conscious Juliet would have glided silently past him, he entreated for a moment's audience.

'Oh no, Mr Harleigh, no!' she cried: 'these are scenes and alarms, that must be risked no more! – '

She was hurrying away; but, upon his saying, 'Hear me, at least, for Elinor!' she turned back.

His eye, now reproached even her compliance; but he rapidly communicated his opinion, that the conference demanded by Elinor ought, in prudence, for the present, to be avoided; since, while she had still some favourite object in view, life, would, unconsciously, be still supported. Time, thus, might insensibly be gained, not only for eluding her fatal project, but happily, perhaps, for taming the dauntless wildness that made her, now, seem to stand scoffingly at bay, between life and death.

Juliet saw nothing to oppose to this statement, and thanking him that, at least, it liberated her, was again hastening away.

'Hold, hold!' cried he, stopping her: 'it is not from me that it must liberate you! Elinor has ratified the restoration of your word – '

'Oh, were that all! – ' she cried, hastily; but, stopping short, deeply blushing, 'Mr Harleigh,' she added, 'compel me not to repeat declarations that cannot vary! – Aid me rather, generously, – kindly, shall I say? – aid me, – to fly, to avoid you, – lest you become yourself …' her voice faltered as she pronounced, 'the most fatal of my enemies!'