The horror of a new debt, incurred under circumstances thus delicate, made the idea even of performing at the public benefit, present itself to her in colours less formidable, if such a measure, by restoring to her the patronage of Miss Arbe, would obviate the return of similar evils, while she was thus hanging, in solitary obscurity, upon herself. Vainly she would have turned her thoughts to other plans, and objects yet untried; she had no means to form any independent scheme; no friends to promote her interest; no counsellors to point out any pursuit, or direct any measures.
Her creditors failed not to call upon her early the next morning, guided and accompanied by Mr Giles Arbe; who, bright with smiles and good humour, declared, that he could not refuse himself the pleasure of being a witness to her getting rid of such a bad business, as that of keeping other people’s money, by doing such a good one as that of paying every one his due. ‘You are much obliged to this pretty lady, I can tell you,’ he said, to the creditors, ‘for she pays you with money that is not her own. However, as the person it belongs to is rich, and a friend, I advise you, as you are none of you rich yourselves, and nearly strangers to her, to take it without scruple.’
To this counsel there was not one dissentient voice.
Can the same person, thought Ellis, be so innocent, yet so mischievous? so fraught with solid notions of right, yet so shallow in judgement, and knowledge of the world?
With a trembling hand, and revolting heart, she changed three of the notes, and discharged all the accounts at once; Mr Giles, eagerly and unbidden, having called up Miss Matson to take her share.
Ellis now deliberated, whether she might not free herself from every demand, by paying, also, Miss Bydel; but the reluctance with which she had already broken into the fearful deposit, soon fixed her to seal up the remaining notes entire.
The shock of this transaction, and the earnestness of her desire to replace money which she deemed it unjustifiable to employ, completed the conquest of her repugnance to public exhibition; and she commissioned Mr Giles to acquaint Miss Arbe, that she was ready to obey her commands.
This he undertook with the utmost pleasure; saying, ‘And it’s lucky enough your consenting to sing those songs, because my cousin, not dreaming of any objection on your part, had already authorised Mr Vinstreigle to put your name in his bills.’
‘My name?’ cried Ellis, starting and changing colour: but the next moment adding, ‘No, no! my name will not appear!—Yet should any one who has ever seen me....’
She shuddered; a nervous horrour took possession of her whole frame; but she soon forced herself to revive, and assume new courage, upon hearing Mr Giles, from the landing-place, again call Miss Matson; and bid all her young women, one by one, and the two maid-servants, hurry up stairs directly, with water and burnt feathers.
Ellis made every enquiry in her power, of who was at Brighthelmstone; and begged Mr Giles to procure her a list of the company. When she had read it, she became more tranquil, though not less sad.
Miss Arbe received the concession with infinite satisfaction; and introduced Ellis, as her protegée, to her new favourite; who professed himself charmed, that the presentation of so promising a subject, to the public, should be made at his benefit.
‘And now, Miss Ellis,’ said Miss Arbe, ‘you will very soon have more scholars than you can teach. If once you get a fame and a name, your embarrassments will be at an end; for all enquiries about who people are, and what they are, and those sort of niceties, will be over. We all learn of the celebrated, be they what they will. Nobody asks how they live, and those sort of things. What signifies? as Miss Sycamore says. We don’t visit them, to be sure, if there is any thing awkward about them. But that’s not the least in the way against their making whole oceans of riches.’
This was not a species of reasoning to offer consolation to Ellis; but she suppressed the disdain which it inspired; and dwelt only upon the hoped accomplishment of her views, through the private teaching which it promised.
In five days’ time, the benefit was to take place; and in three, Ellis was summoned to a rehearsal at the rooms.
She was putting on her hat, meaning to be particularly early in her attendance, that she might place herself in some obscure corner, before any company arrived; to avoid the pain of passing by those who knowing, might not notice, or noticing, might but mortify her; when one of the young work-women brought her intelligence, that a gentleman, just arrived in a post chaise, requested admittance.
‘A gentleman?’ she repeated, with anxiety:—‘tell him, if you please, that I am engaged, and can see no company.’
The young woman soon returned.
‘The gentleman says, Ma’am, that he comes upon affairs of great importance, which he can communicate only to yourself.’
Ellis begged the young woman to request, that Miss Matson would desire him to leave his name and business in writing.
Miss Matson was gone to Lady Kendover’s, with some new patterns, just arrived from London.
The young woman, however, made the proposition, but without effect: the gentleman was in great haste, and would positively listen to no denial.
Strong and palpable affright, now seized Ellis; am I—Oh heaven!—she murmured to herself, pursued?—and then began, but checked an inquiry, whether there were any private door by which she could escape: yet, pressed by the necessity of appearing at the rehearsal, after painfully struggling for courage, she faintly articulated, ‘Let him come up stairs.’
The young woman descended, and Ellis remained in breathless suspense, till she heard some one tap at her door.
She could not pronounce, Who’s there? but she compelled herself to open it; though without lifting up her eyes, dreading to encounter the object that might meet them, till she was roused by the words, ‘Pardon my intrusion!’ and perceived Harleigh gently entering her apartment.
She started,—but it was not with terrour; she came forward,—but it was not to escape! The colour which had forsaken her cheeks, returned to them with a crimson glow; the fear which had averted her eyes, was changed into an expression of even extatic welcome; and, clasping her hands, with sudden, impulsive, irresistible surprise and joy, she cried, ‘Is it you?—Mr Harleigh! you!’
Surprise now was no longer her own, and her joy was participated in yet more strongly. Harleigh, who, though he had forced his way, was embarrassed and confused, expecting displeasure, and prepared for reproach; who had seen with horrour the dismay of her countenance; and attributed to the effect of his compulsatory entrance the terrified state in which he found her; Harleigh, at sight of this rapid transition from agony to delight; at the flattering ejaculation of ‘Is it you?’ and the sound of his own name, pronounced with an expression of even exquisite satisfaction;—Harleigh in a sudden trance of irrepressible rapture, made a nearly forcible effort to seize her hand, exclaiming, ‘Can you receive me, then, thus sweetly? Can you forgive an intrusion that—’ when Ellis recovering her self-command, drew back, and solemnly said, ‘Mr Harleigh, forbear! or I must quit the room!’
Harleigh reluctantly, yet instantly desisted; but the pleasure of so unhoped a reception still beat at his heart, though it no longer sparkled in her eyes: and though the enchanting animation of her manner, was altered into the most repressing gravity, the blushes which still tingled, still dyed her cheeks, betrayed that all within was not chilled, however all without might seem cold.
Checked, therefore, but not subdued, he warmly solicited a few minutes conversation; but, gaining firmness and force every instant, she told him that she had an appointment which admitted not of procrastination.
‘I know well your appointment,’ cried he, agitated in his turn, ‘too, too well!—’Tis that fatal—or, rather, let me hope, that happy, that seasonable information, which I received last night, in a letter containing a bill of the concert, from Ireton, that has brought me hither;—that impelled me, uncontrollably, to break through your hard injunctions; that pointed out the accumulating dangers to all my views, and told me that every gleam of future expectation—’
Ellis interrupted him at this word: he entreated her pardon, but went on.
‘You cannot be offended at this effort: it is but the courage of despondence, I come to demand a final hearing!’
‘Since you know, Sir,’ cried she, with quickness, ‘my appointment, you must be sensible I am no longer mistress of my time. This is all I can say. I must be gone,—and you will not, I trust,—if I judge you rightly,—you will not compel me to leave you in my apartment.’
‘Yes! you judge me rightly! for the universe I would not cause you just offence! Trust me, then, more generously! be somewhat less suspicious, somewhat more open, and take not this desperate step, without hearkening to its objections, without weighing its consequences!’
She could enter, she said, into no discussion; and prepared to depart.
‘Impossible!’ cried he, with energy; ‘I cannot let you go!—I cannot, without a struggle, resign myself to irremediable despair!’
Ellis, recovered now from the impression caused by his first appearance, with a steady voice, and sedate air, said, ‘This is a language, Sir,—you know it well,—to which I cannot, must not listen. It is as useless, therefore, as it is painful, to renew it. I beseech you to believe in the sincerity of what I have already been obliged to say, and to spare yourself—to spare, shall I add, me?—all further oppressive conflicts.’
A sigh burst from her heart, but she strove to look unmoved.
‘If you are generous enough to share, even in the smallest degree,’ cried he, ‘the pain which you inflict; you will, at least, not refuse me this one satisfaction.... Is it for Elinor ... and for Elinor only ... that you deny me, thus, all confidence?’
‘Oh no, no, no!’ cried she, hastily: ‘if Miss Joddrel were not in existence,—’ she checked herself, and sighed more deeply; but, presently added, ‘Yet, surely, Miss Joddrel were cause sufficient!’
‘You fill me,’ he cried, ‘with new alarm, new disturbance!—I supplicate you, nevertheless, to forego your present plan;—and to shew some little consideration to what I have to offer.—’
She interrupted him. ‘I must be unequivocally, Sir,—for both our sakes,—understood. You must call for no consideration from me! I can give you none! You must let me pursue the path that my affairs, that my own perceptions, that my necessities point out to me, without interference, and without expecting from me the smallest reference to your opinions, or feelings.—Why, why,’ continued she, in a tone less firm, ‘why will you force from me such ungrateful words?—Why leave me no alternative between impropriety, or arrogance?’
‘Why,—let me rather ask,—why must I find you for ever thus impenetrable, thus incomprehensible?—I will not, however, waste your patience. I see your eagerness to be gone.—Yet, in defiance of all the rigour of your scruples, you must bear to hear me avow, in my total ignorance of their cause, that I feel it impossible utterly to renounce all distant hope of clearer prospects.—How, then, can I quietly submit to see you enter into a career of public life, subversive—perhaps—to me, of even any eventual amelioration?’
Ellis blushed deeply as she answered, ‘If I depended, Sir, upon you,—if you were responsible for my actions; or if your own fame, or name, or sentiments were involved in my conduct ... then you would do right, if such is your opinion, to stamp my project with the stigma of your disapprobation, and to warn me of the loss of your countenance:—but, till then, permit me to say, that the business which calls me away has the first claim to my time.’
She opened the door.
‘One moment,’ cried he, earnestly, ‘I conjure you!—The hurry of alarm, the certainty that delay would make every effort abortive; have precipitated me into the use of expressions that may have offended you. Forgive them, I entreat! and do not judge me to be so narrow minded; or so insensible to the enchantment of talents, and the witchery of genius; as not to feel as much respect for the character, where it is worthy, as admiration for the abilities, of those artists whose profession it is to give delight to the public. Had I first known you as a public performer, and seen you in the same situations which have shewn me your worth, I must have revered you as I do at this instant: I must have been devoted to you with the same unalterable attachment: but then, also,—if you would have indulged me with a hearing,—must I not have made it my first petition, that your accomplishments should be reserved for the resources of your leisure, and the happiness of your friends, at your own time, and your own choice? Would you have branded such a desire as pride? or would you not rather have allowed it to be called by that word, which your own every action, every speech, every look bring perpetually to mind, propriety?’
Ellis sighed: ‘Alas!’ she said, ‘my own repugnance to this measure makes me but too easily conceive the objections to which it may be liable! and if you, so singularly liberal, if even you—’
She stopt; but Harleigh, not less encouraged by a phrase thus begun, than if she had proceeded, warmly continued.
‘If then, in a case such as I have presumed to suppose, to have withdrawn you from the public would not have been wrong, how can it be faulty, upon the same principles, and with the same intentions, to endeavour, with all my might, to turn you aside from such a project?—I see you are preparing to tell me that I argue upon premises to which you have not concurred. Suffer me, nevertheless, to add a few words, in explanation of what else may seem presumption, or impertinence: I have hinted that this plan might cloud my dearest hopes; imagine not, thence, that my prejudices upon this subject are invincible: no! but I have Relations who have never deserved to forfeit my consideration;—and these—not won, like me, by the previous knowledge of your virtues.—’
Ellis would repeatedly have interrupted him, but he would not be stopped.
‘Hear me on,’ he continued, ‘I beseech you! By my plainness only I can shew my sincerity. For these Relations, then, permit me to plead. It is true, I am independent: my actions are under no control; but these are ties from which we are never emancipated; ties which cling to our nature, and which, though voluntary, are imperious, and cannot be broken or relinquished, without self-reproach; ties formed by the equitable laws of fellow-feeling; which bind us to our family, which unites us with our friends; and which, by our own expectations, teach us what is due to our connexions. Ah, then, if ever brighter prospects may open to my eyes, let me see them sullied, by mists hovering over the approbation of those with whom I am allied!’
‘How just,’ cried Ellis, trying to force a smile, ‘yet how useless is this reasoning! I cannot combat sentiments in which I concur; yet I can change nothing in a plan to which they must have no reference! I am sorry to appear ungrateful, where I am only steady; but I have nothing new to say; and must entreat you to dispense with fruitless repetitions. Already, I fear, I am beyond the hour of my engagement.’
She was now departing.
‘You distract me!’ cried he, with vehemence, ‘you distract me!’ He caught her gown, but, upon her stopping, instantly let it go. Pale and affrighted, ‘Mr Harleigh,’ she cried, ‘is it to you I must own a scene that may raise wonder and surmises in the house, and aggravate distresses and embarrassments which, already, I find nearly intolerable?’
Shocked and affected, he shut the door, and would impetuously, yet tenderly, have taken her hand; but, upon her shrinking back, with displeasure and alarm, he more quietly said, ‘Pardon! pardon! and before you condemn me inexorably to submit to such rigorous disdain and contempt—’
‘Why will you use such words? Contempt?—Good heaven!’ she began, with an emotion that almost instantly subsided, and she added, ‘Yet of what consequence to you ought to be my sensations, my opinions?’ They can avail you nothing! Let me go,—and let me conjure you to be gone!’
‘You are then decided against me?’ cried he, in a voice scarcely articulate.
‘I am,’ she answered, without looking at him, but calmly.
He bowed, with an air that relinquished all further attempt to detain her; but which shewed him too much wounded to speak.
Carefully still avoiding his eyes, she was moving off; but, when she touched the lock of the door, he exclaimed, ‘Will you not, at least, before you go, allow me to address a few words to you as a friend? simply,—undesignedly,—only as a friend?’
‘Ah! Mr Harleigh!’ cried Ellis, irresistibly softened, ‘as a friend could I, indeed, have trusted you, I might long since,—perhaps,—have confided in your liberality and benevolence: but now, ’tis wholly impossible!’
‘No!’ exclaimed he, warmly, and touched to the soul; ‘nothing is impossible that you wish to effect! Hear me, then, trust and speak to me as a friend; a faithful, a cordial, a disinterested friend! Confide to me your name—your situation—the motives to your concealment—the causes that can induce such mystery of appearance, in one whose mind is so evidently the seat of the clearest purity:—the reasons of such disguise—’
‘Disguise, I acknowledge, Sir, you may charge me with; but not deceit! I give no false colouring. I am only not open.’
‘That, that is what first struck me as a mark of a distinguished character! That noble superiority to all petty artifices, even for your immediate safety; that undoubting innocence, that framed no precautions against evil constructions; that innate dignity, which supported without a murmur such difficulties, such trials;—’
‘Ah, Mr Harleigh! a friend and a flatterer—are they, then, synonimous terms? If, indeed, you would persuade me you feel that they are distinct, you will not make me begin a new and distasteful career—since to begin it I think indispensable;—with the additional chagrin of appearing to be wanting in punctuality. No further opposition, I beg!’
‘O yet one word, one fearful word must be uttered—and one fatal—or blest reply must be granted!—The excess of my suspense, upon the most essential of all points, must be terminated! I will wait with inviolable patience the explanation of all others. Tell me, then, to what barbarous cause I must attribute this invincible, this unrelenting reserve?—How I may bear an abrupt answer I know not, but the horrour of uncertainty I experience, and can endure no longer. Is it, then, to the force of circumstances I may impute it?—or ... is it....’
‘Mr Harleigh,’ interrupted Ellis, with strong emotion, ‘there is no medium, in a situation such as mine, between unlimited confidence, or unbroken taciturnity: my confidence I cannot give you; it is out of my power—ask me, then, nothing!’
‘One word,—one little word,—and I will torment you no longer: is it to pre-engagement—’
Her face was averted, and her hand again was placed upon the lock of the door.
‘Speak, I implore you, speak!—Is that heart, which I paint to myself the seat of every virtue ... is it already gone?—given, dedicated to another?’
He now trembled himself, and durst not resist her effort to open the door, as she replied, ‘I have no heart!—I must have none?’
She uttered this in a tone of gaiety, that would utterly have confounded his dearest expectations, had not a glance, with difficulty caught, shewed him a tear starting into her eye; while a blush of fire, that defied constraint, dyed her cheeks; and kept no pace with the easy freedom from emotion, that her voice and manner seemed to indicate.
Flushed with tumultuous sensations of conflicting hopes and fears, he now tenderly said, ‘You are determined then, to go?’
‘I am; but you must first leave my room.’
‘Is there, then, no further appeal?’
‘None! none—We may be heard disputing down stairs:—persecute me no longer!’
Her voice grew tremulous, and spoke displeasure; but her eyes still sedulously shunned his, and still her cheeks were crimsoned. Harleigh paused a moment, looking at her with speechless anxiety; but, upon an impatient motion of her hand that he would depart, he mildly said, ‘As your friend, at least, you will permit me to see you again?’ and, without risking a reply, slowly descended the stairs.
Ellis, shutting herself into her room, sunk upon a chair, and wept.
She was soon interrupted by a message from Mr Vinstreigle, to acquaint her that the rehearsal was begun.
She felt unable to sing, play, or speak, and, sending an excuse that she was indisposed, desired that her attendance might be dispensed with for that morning.
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