To engage the good will of her new hostess, she bestowed upon her nearly every thing that she had worn upon entering the cottage. What she had been seen and discovered in, could no longer serve any purpose of concealment; and all disguise was disgusting to her, if not induced by the most imperious necessity. She clothed herself, therefore, from the fairy stores of her munificent old sylph; with whom her debts were so multiplied and so considerable, that she meant, at all events, to call upon her family for their disbursement.
The quietness of this residence, induced her to propose remaining here: and her new hostess, who was one of the many who, where interest preaches passiveness, make it a point not to be troublesome, consented, without objection or enquiry.
Hence, again, she wrote to Gabriella, from whom she languished for intelligence.
In this perfect retirement, she passed her time in deep rumination; her thoughts for ever hovering around the Bishop, upon whose fate her own invariably depended.
Her little apartment was close and hot; unshaded by blinds, unsheltered by shutters; she went forth, therefore, early every morning, to enjoy fresh air in the cool of a neighbouring wood, which, once having entered, she knew not how to quit. Solitude there, had not the character of seclusion; it bore not, as in her room, the air of banishment, if not of imprisonment; and the beautiful prospects around her, though her sole, were a never-failing source of recreation.
She permitted not, however, her love of the country to beguile her into danger by the love of variety; she wandered not far from her new habitation, in the vicinity of Milton-abbey; of which she never lost sight from distance, though frequently from intervening hills and trees.
But no answer arrived from Gabriella; and, in a few days, her own letter was returned, with a line written by the post-man upon the cover, to say, No. — Frith-street, Soho, was empty.
New sorrow, now, and fearful distress assailed every feeling of Juliet: What could have occasioned this sudden measure? Whither was Gabriella gone? Might it be happiness?—or was it some new evil that had caused this change of abode? The letter sent to Salisbury had never been claimed; nor did Juliet dare demand it: but Gabriella might, perhaps, have written her new plan by the address sent from the farm-house.
It was now that she blessed the munificent Sir Jaspar, to whose purse she had immediate recourse for sending a man and horse to the cottage; with written instructions to enquire for a letter, concerning which she had left directions with the good old cottager.
While, to wear away the hours devoted to anxious waiting, she wandered, as usual, in the view of Milton-abbey, from a rich valley, bounded by rising hills, whose circling slopes bore the form of undulating waves, she perceived, from a small distance, a horseman gallopping towards her cottage.
It could not already be her messenger. She felt uneasy, and, gliding to the brow of an eminence, sat down upon the turf, as much as possible out of sight.
In a short time, she heard the quick pacing step of a man in haste. She tried to place herself still more obscurely; but, by moving, caught the eye of the object she meant to avoid. He approached her rapidly, but when near enough to distinguish her, abruptly stopt, as if to recollect himself; and Juliet, at the same moment that she was herself discerned, recognized Harleigh.
With difficulty restraining an exclamation, from surprize and painful emotion, she looked round to discover if it would be possible to elude him; but she could only walk towards Milton-abbey, in full view herself from that noble seat; or immediately face him by returning to her home. She stood still, therefore, though bending her eye to the ground; hurt and offended that, at such a juncture, Harleigh could break into her retreat; and grieved yet more deeply, that Harleigh could excite in her even transitory displeasure.
Harleigh stept forward, but his voice, husky and nervous, so inarticulately pronounced something relative to a packet and a work-bag, that Juliet, losing her displeasure in a sudden hope of hearing some news of her property, raised her head, with a look that demanded an explanation.
Still he strove in vain for sufficient calmness to speak distinctly; yet his answer gave Juliet to understand, that he had conveyed her packet and work-bag to the cottage which he had been told she inhabited.
‘And where, Sir,’ cried Juliet, surprized into vivacity and pleasure at this unexpected hearing, ‘how, and where have they been recovered?’
Harleigh now blushed himself, at the blushes which he knew he must raise in her cheeks, as he replied, that the packet and the work-bag which he had brought, had been dropt in his room at the inn.
Crimson is pale to the depth of red with which shame and confusion dyed her face; while Harleigh, recovering his voice, sought to relieve her embarrassment, by more rapidly continuing his discourse.
‘I should sooner have endeavoured to deliver these articles, but that I knew not, till yesterday, that they had fallen to my care. I had left the inn, to follow, and seek Sir Jaspar Herrington; but having various papers and letters in my room, that I had not had time to collect, I obtained leave to take away the key with me, of the landlady, to whom I was well known,—for there, or in that neighbourhood, an irresistible interest has kept me, from the time that, through my groom, I had heard ... who had been seen ... at Bagshot ... entering the Salisbury stage!—Yesterday, when I returned, to the inn, I first perceived these parcels.’—
He stopt; but Juliet could not speak, could not look up; could pronounce no apology, nor enter into any explanation.
‘Sir Jaspar Herrington,’ he continued, ‘whom I have just left, is still at Salisbury; but setting out for town. From him I learnt your immediate direction; but not knowing what might be the value of the packets, nor,—’ He hesitated a moment, and then, with a sigh, added, ‘nor how to direct them! I determined upon venturing to deliver them myself.’
The tingling cheeks of Juliet, at the inference of the words ‘nor how to direct them,’ seemed on fire; but she was totally silent.
‘I have carefully sealed them,’ he resumed, ‘and I have delivered them to the woman of the cottage, for the young lady who at present sleeps there; and, hearing that that young lady was walking in the neighbourhood, I ventured to follow, with this intelligence.’
‘You are very good, Sir,’ Juliet strove to answer; but her lips were parched, and no words could find their way.
This excess of timidity brought back the courage of Harleigh, who, advancing a step or two, said, ‘You will not be angry that Sir Jaspar, moved by my uncontrollable urgency, has had the charity to reveal to me some particulars....’
‘Oh! make way for me to pass, Mr Harleigh!’ now interrupted Juliet, forcing her voice, and striving to force a passage.
‘Did you wish, then,’ said Harleigh, in a tone the most melancholy, ‘could you wish that I should still languish in harrowing suspense? or burst with ignorance?’
‘Oh no!’ cried she, raising her eyes, which glistened with tears, ‘no! If the mystery that so long has hung about me, by occupying your ...’ She sought a word, and then continued: ‘your imagination ... impedes the oblivion that ought to bury me and my misfortunes from further thought,—then, indeed, I ought to be thankful to Sir Jaspar,—and I am thankful that he has let you know, ... that he has informed you....’
She could not finish the sentence.
‘Yes!’ cried Harleigh with energy, ‘I have heard the dreadful history of your wrongs! of the violences by which you have suffered, of the inhuman attempts upon your liberty, your safety, your honour!—But since you have thus happily—’
‘Mr Harleigh,’ cried Juliet, struggling to recover her presence of mind, ‘I need no longer, I trust, now, beg your absence! All I can have to say you must, now, understand ... anticipate ... acknowledge ... since you are aware....’
‘Ah!’ cried Harleigh, in a tone not quite free from reproach;—‘had you but, from the beginning, condescended to inform me of your situation! a situation so impossible to divine! so replete with horrour, with injury, with unheard of suffering,—had you, from the first, instead of avoiding, flying me, deigned to treat me with some trust—’
‘Mr Harleigh,’ said Juliet, with eagerness, ‘whatever may be your surprize that such should be my situation, ... my fate, ... you can, at least, require, now, no explanation why I have fled you!’
The word why, vibrated instantly to the heart of Harleigh, where it condolingly said: It was duty, then, not averseness, not indifference, that urged that flight! she had not fled, had she not deemed herself engaged!—Juliet, who had hastily uttered the why in the solicitude of self-vindication, shewed, by a change of complexion, the moment that it had passed her lips, that she felt the possible inference of which it was susceptible, and dropt her eyes; fearful to risk discovering the consciousness that they might indicate.
Harleigh, however, now brightened, glowed with revived sensations: ‘Ah! be not,’ he cried, ‘be not the victim of your scruples! let not your too delicate fears of doing wrong by others, urge you to inflict wrong, irreparable wrong, upon yourself! Your real dangers are past; none now remain but from a fancied,—pardon, pardon me!—a fancied refinement, unfounded in reason, or in right! Suffer, therefore—’
‘Hold, Sir, hold!—we must not even talk upon this subject:—nor, at this moment, upon any other!—’
Her brow shewed rising displeasure; but Harleigh was intractable. ‘Pronounce 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 title,—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 pass, 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, assuming 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 circumstanced, 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 snatch 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 passage.
Utterly confounded herself, at the half-pronounced 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.
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