Her brow shewed rising displeasure; but Harleigh was intractable.

'p.r.o.nounce not,' he cried, 'an interdiction! I make no claim, no plea, no condition. I will speak wholly as an impartial man;--and have you not condescended to tell me, that as a friend, if to that t.i.tle,--so limited, yet so honourable,--I would confine myself,--you would not disdain to consult with me? As such, I am now here. I feel, I respect, I revere the delicacy of all your ideas, the perfection of your conduct! I will put, therefore, aside, all that relates not simply to yourself, and to your position; I will speak to you, for the moment, and in his absence,--as--as Lord Melbury!--as your brother!--'

An involuntary smile here unbent the knitting brow of Juliet, who could not feel offended, or sorry, that Sir Jaspar had revealed the history of her birth.

She desired, nevertheless, to pa.s.s, refusing every species of discussion.

'If you will not answer, will not speak,' cried Harleigh, still obstructing her way, 'fear not, at least, to hear! Are you not at liberty? Is not your persecutor gone?--Can he ever return?'

'Gone?' repeated Juliet.

'I have myself seen him embark! I rode after his chaise, I pursued it to the sea-coast, I saw him under sail.'

Juliet, with uplifted eyes, clasped her hands, from an emotion of ungovernable joy; which a thousand blushes betrayed her vain struggles to suppress.

Harleigh observed not this unmoved: 'Ah, Madam!' he cried, 'since, thus critically, you have escaped;--since, thus happily, you are released;--since no church ritual has ever sanctioned the sacrilegious violence--'

'Spare all ineffectual controversy!' cried Juliet, a.s.suming an air and tone of composure, with which her quick heaving bosom was ill in harmony; 'I can neither talk nor listen upon this subject. You know, now, my story: dread and atrocious as is my connection, my faith to it must be unbroken, till I have seen the Bishop! and till the iniquity of my chains may be proved, and my restoration to my violated freedom may be legalized. Do not look so shocked; so angry, must I say?--Remember, that a point of conscience can be settled only internally! I will speak, therefore, but one word more; and I must hear no reply: little as I feel to belong to the person in question, I cannot consider myself to be my own! 'Tis a tie which, whether or not it binds me to him, excludes me, while thus circ.u.mstanced, from all others!--This, Sir, is my last word!--Adieu!'

Harleigh, though looking nearly petrified, still stood before her. 'You fly us, then,' he cried, resentfully, though mournfully, 'both alike?

You put us upon a par?--'

'No!' answered Juliet, hastily, 'him I fly because I hate;--You--'

The deep scarlet which mounted into her whole face finished the sentence; in defiance of a sudden and abrupt breaking off, that meant and hoped to s.n.a.t.c.h the unguarded phrase from comprehension.

But Harleigh felt its fullest contrast; his hopes, his wishes, his whole soul completed it by You, because I love!--not that he could persuade himself that Juliet would have used those words; he knew the contrary; knew that she would sooner thus situated expire; but such, he felt, was the impulse of her thoughts; such the consciousness that broke off her speech.

He durst not venture at any acknowledgement; but, once appeased in his doubts, and satisfied in his feelings, he respected her opinions, and, yielding to her increased, yet speechless eagerness to be gone, he silently, but with eyes of expressive tenderness, ceased to obstruct her pa.s.sage.

Utterly confounded herself, at the half-p.r.o.nounced thought, thus inadvertently surprised from her, and thus palpably seized and interpreted, she strove to devize some term that might obviate dangerous consequences; but she felt her cheeks so hot, so cold, and again so hot, that she durst not trust her face to his observation; and, accepting the opening which he made for her, she was returning to her cottage, tortured,--and yet soothed,--by indescribable emotions; when an energetic cry of 'Ellis!--Harleigh!--Ellis!' made her raise her eyes to the adjacent hill, and perceive Elinor.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xV

With arms extended, and a commanding air, Elinor, having made signs to the dismayed Harleigh not to move, awaited, where she stood, the terrified, but obedient Juliet.

'Avoid me not!' she cried, 'Ellis! why should you avoid me? I have given you back your plighted word; and the pride of Harleigh has saved him from all bonds. Why, then, should you fly?'

Juliet attempted not to make any answer.

'The conference, the last conference,' continued Elinor, 'which so ardently I have demanded, is still unaccorded. Repeatedly I could have surprized it, singly, from Harleigh; but--'

She stopt, coloured, looked indignant, yet ashamed, and then haughtily went on: 'Imagine not my courage tarnished by cowardly apprehensions of misinterpretation,--suspicion,--censoriousness;... no! let the world sneer at its pleasure! Its spleen will never keep pace with my contempt.

But Harleigh!--I brave not the censure of Harleigh! even though prepared, and resolved, to quit him for evermore! And, with ideas punctilious such as his of feminine delicacy, he might blame, perhaps,--should I seek him alone--'

She blushed more deeply, and, with extreme agitation, added, 'Harleigh, when we shall meet no more, will always honourably say, Her pa.s.sion for me might be tinctured with madness, but its purity was without alloy!'

She now turned away, to hide a starting tear; but, soon resuming her usually lively manner, said, 'I have traced you, at last, together; and by means of our caustick, bilious fellow-traveller, Riley; whom I encountered by accident; and who runs, snarling, yet curious, after his fellow-creatures, working at making himself enemies, as if enmity were a pleasing, or lucrative profession! From him I learnt, that he had just seen you,--and together!--near Salisbury. I discovered you, Ellis, two days ago; but Harleigh, though I have been roving some time in your vicinity, only this moment.'

A sudden shriek now broke from her, and Juliet, affrighted and looking around, perceived Harleigh pacing hastily away.

The shriek reached him, and he stopt.

'Fly, fly, to him,' she cried, 'Ellis; a.s.sure him, I have no present personal project; none! I solemnly promise, none! But I have an opinion to gather from him, of which my ignorance burns, devours me, and will not let me rest, alive nor dead!'

Juliet, distressed, irresolute, ventured not to move.

''Tis his duty,' continued Elinor, 'after his solemn declaration, to initiate me into his motives for believing in a future state. I have been distracting my burthened senses over theological works; but my head is in no condition to comprehend them. They treat, also, of belief in a future state, as of a thing not to be proved, but to be taken for granted. Let him penetrate me with his own notions; or frankly acknowledge their insufficiency. But let him mark that they are indeed his own! Let them be neither fanatical, illusory, nor traditional.'

Juliet was compelled to obey; but while she was repeating her message, Elinor descended the hill, and they all met at its foot.

'Harleigh,' she cried, 'fear me not! Do not imagine I shall again go over the same ground;--at least, not with the monotonous stupidity of again going over it in the same manner. Yet believe not my resolution to be shaken! But I have some doubts, relative to your own principles and opinions, of which I demand a solution.'

She then seated herself upon the turf, and made Harleigh seat himself before her, while Juliet remained by her side.

'Can you feign, Harleigh? Can you endure to act a part, in defiance of your n.o.bler nature, merely to prolong my detested life? Do you join in the popular cry against suicide, merely to arrest my impatient hand? If not, initiate me, I beseech, in the series of pretended reasoning, by which honour, honesty, and understanding such as yours, have been duped into bigotry? How is it, explain! that you can have been worked upon to believe in an existence after death? Ah, Harleigh! could you, indeed, give so sublime a resting-place to my labouring ideas!--I would consent to enter the ecclesiastical court myself, to sing the recantation of what you deem my errours. And then, Albert, I might learn,--with all my wretchedness!--to bear to live,--for then, I might seek and foster some hope in dying!'

'Dear Elinor!' cried Harleigh, gently, almost tenderly, 'let me send for some divine!'

'How conscious is this retreat,' she cried, 'of the weakness of your cause! Ah! why thus try to bewilder a poor forlorn traveller, who is dropping with fatigue upon her road? and to fret and goad her on, when the poor tortured wretch languishes to give up the journey altogether?

Why not rather, more generously, more like yourself, aid her to attain repose? to open her burning veins, and bid her pent up blood flow freely to her relief? or kindly point the steel to her agonized heart, whose last sigh would be ecstacy if it owed its liberation to your pitying hand! Oh Harleigh! what vain prejudice, what superst.i.tious sophistry, robs me of the only solace that could soothe my parting breath?'

'What is it Elinor means?' cried Harleigh, alarmed, yet affecting to speak lightly: 'Has she no compunction for the labour she causes my blood in thus perpetually accelerating its circulation.'

'Pardon me, dear Harleigh, I have inadvertently run from my purpose to my wishes. To the point, then. Make me, if it be possible, conceive how your reason has thus been played upon, and your discernment been set asleep. I have studied this matter abroad, with the ablest casuists, I have met with; and though I may not retain, or detail their reasoning, well enough to make a convert of any other, they have fixed for ever in my own mind, a conviction that death and annihilation are one. Why do you knit your brow?--And see how Ellis starts!--And why do you both look at me as if I were mad? Mad? because I would rather crush misery than endure it? Mad? because I would rather, at my own time, die the death of reason, than by compulsion, and when least disposed, that of nature? Of reason, that appreciates life but by enjoyment; not of nature, that would make misery linger, till malady or old age dissolve the worn out fabric. To indulge our little miserable fears and propensities, we give flattering epithets to all our meannesses; for what is endurance of worldly pain and affliction but folly? what patience, but insipidity?

what suffering, but cowardice? Oh suicide! triumphant antidote to woe!

straight forward, unerring route to rest, to repose! I call upon thy aid! I invoke--'

'Repose?--rest?' interrupted Harleigh, 'how earned? By deserting our duties? By quitting our posts? By forsaking and wounding all by whom we are cherished?'

'One word, Harleigh, answers all that: Did we ask for our being? Why was it given us if doomed to be wretched? To whom are we accountable for renouncing a donation, made without our consent or knowledge? O, if ever that wretched thing called life has a n.o.ble moment, it must surely be that of its voluntary sacrifice! lopping off, at a blow, that hydra-headed monster of evil upon evil, called time; bounding over the imps of superst.i.tion; dancing upon the pangs of disease; and boldly, hardily mocking the senseless legends, that would frighten us with eternity!--Eternity? to poor, little, frail, finite beings like us! Oh Albert! worldly considerations, monkish inventions, and superst.i.tious reveries set apart;--reason called forth, truth developed, probabilities canva.s.sed,--say! is it not clear that death is an end to all? an abyss eternal? a conclusion? Nature comes but for succession; though the pride of man would give her resurrection. Mouldering all together we go, to form new earth for burying our successors.'

'Horrible, Elinor, most horrible! yet if, indeed, it is your opinion that you are doomed to sink to nothing; if your soul, in the full tide of its energies, and in the pride of intellect, seems to you a mere appendant to the body; if you believe it to be of the same fragile materials; how can you wish to shorten the so short period of consciousness? to abridge the so brief moment of sensibility? Is it not always time enough to think, feel, see, hear,--love and be loved no more?'

'Yes! 'tis always too soon to lose happiness; but misery,--ah Albert!--why should misery, when it can so easily be stilled, be endured?'

'Stilled, Elinor?--What mean you? By annihilation?--How an infidel a.s.sumes fort.i.tude to wish for death, is my constant astonishment! To believe in the eternal loss of all he holds, or knows, or feels; to be persuaded that "this sensible, warm being" will "melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,"--and to believe that there all ends! Surely every species of existence must be preferable to such an expectation from its cessation! Dust! literal dust!--Food for worms!--to be trod upon;--crushed;--dug up;--battered down;--is that our termination?

That,--and nothing more?'

'Tis shocking, Albert, no doubt; shocking and disgusting. Yet why disguise the fact? Reason, philosophy, a.n.a.logy, all prove our materialism. Even common observation, even daily experience, in viewing our natural end, where neither sickness nor accident impede, nor shorten its progress, prove it by superannuation; shew clearly that mind and body, when they die the long death of nature, gradually decline together.'

'Were that double decay constant, Elinor, in its junction, you might thence, perhaps, draw that inference; but does not the body wither as completely by decay, in the very prime, and pride, and bloom of youth, where the death is consumption, as in the most worn-out decrepitude of age? Yet the capacity is often, even to the last minute, as perfect as in the vigour of health. Were all within, as well as all without, material, would not the blight to one involve, uniformly, the blight to the other? How often, too, does age, even the oldest, escape any previous decay of intellect! There are records extant, of those who, after attaining their hundredth year, have been capable of bearing testimony in trials; but are there any of those, who, at half that age, have preserved their external appearance? No. It is the body, therefore, not the soul, that, in a natural state, and free from the accelerations of accident, seems first to degenerate. The grace of symmetry, the charm of expression, may last with our existence, and delight to its latest date; but that which we understand exclusively, as personal perfections,--how soon is it over! Not only before the intellects are impaired, but even, and not rarely, before they are arrived at their full completion. Can mind, then, and body be but one and the same thing, when they neither flourish nor wither together?'

'Ah, Harleigh! is it not your willing mind, that here frames its sentiments from its exaltation? Not your deeper understanding, that defines your future expectations from your rational belief?'

'No, Elinor; my belief in the immortality of the soul may be strengthened, but it is not framed by my wishes. Let me, however, ask you a question in return. Your disbelief of the immortality of the soul, is founded on your inability to have it, visually, or orally, demonstrated: Let me, then, ask, can the nature, use, and destinations of the soul, however darkly hidden from our a.n.a.lysing powers, be more impervious to our limited foresight, than the narrower, yet equally, to us, invisible, destiny of our days to come upon earth? But does any one, therefore, from not knowing its purposes, disbelieve that his life may be lengthened? Yet which of us can divine what his fate will be from year to year? What his actions, from hour to hour? his thoughts, from moment to moment?'