The Wanderer Volume V Part 11

find again those it had lost? be received in the Heaven of Heavens, where it is destined,--not, Oh wretched idea!--to eternal sleep, inertness, annihilating dust;--but to life, to joy, to sweetest reminiscence, to tenderest re-unions, to grateful adoration to intelligence never ending! Oh! Elinor! keep for ever in mind, that if no mortal is gifted to prove that this is true,--neither is any one empowered to prove that it is false!'

'Oh delicious idea!' cried Elinor, rising: 'Oh image of perfection! Oh Albert! conquering Albert! I hope,--I hope;--my soul may be immortal!--Pray for me, Albert! Pray that I may dare offer up prayers for myself!--Send me your Christian divine to guide me on my way; and may your own heaven bless you, peerless Albert! for ever!--Adieu! adieu!

adieu!'--

Fervently, then, clasping her hands, she sunk, with overpowering feelings, upon her knees.

Juliet came forward to support her; and Harleigh, deeply gratified, though full of commiseration, eagerly undertook the commission; and, echoing back her blessing, without daring to utter a word to Juliet, slowly quitted the spot.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xVI

Elinor, for a considerable time, remained in the same posture, ruminating, in silent abstraction; yet giving, from time to time, emphatic, though involuntary utterance, to short and incoherent sentences. 'A spirit immortal!--' 'Resurrection of the Dead!--' 'A life to come!--' 'Oh Albert! is there, then, a region where I may hope to see thee again!'

Suddenly, at length, seeming to recollect herself, 'Pardon,' she cried, 'Albert, my strangeness,--queerness,--oddity,--what will you call it? I am not the less,--O no! O no! penetrated by your impressive reasoning--Albert!--'

She lifted up her head, and, looking around, exclaimed, with an air of consternation, 'Is he gone?'

She arose, and with more firmness, said, 'He is right! I meant not,--and I ought not to see him any more;--though dearer to my eyes is his sight, than life or light!--'

Looking, then, earnestly forwards, as if seeking him, 'Farewell, Oh Albert!' she cried: 'We now, indeed, are parted for ever! To see thee again, would sink me into the lowest abyss of contempt,--and I would far rather bear thy hatred!--Yet hatred?--from that soul of humanity!--what violence must be put upon its nature! And how cruel to reverse such ineffable philanthropy!--No!--hate me not, my Albert!--It shall be my own care that thou shalt not despise me!'

Slowly she then walked away, followed silently by Juliet, who durst not address her. Anxiously she looked around, till, at some distance, she descried a horseman. It was Harleigh. She stopped, deeply moved, and seemed inwardly to bless him. But, when he was no longer in sight, she no longer restrained her anguish, and, casting herself upon the turf, groaned rather than wept, exclaiming, 'Must I live--yet behold thee no more!--Will neither sorrow, nor despair, nor even madness kill me?--Must nature, in her decrepitude, alone bring death to Elinor?'

Rising, then, and vainly trying again to descry the horse, 'All, all is gone!' she cried, 'and I dare not even die!--All, all is gone, from the lost, unhappy Elinor, but life and misery!'

Turning, then, with quickness to Juliet, while pride and shame dried her eyes, 'Ellis,' she said, 'let him not know I murmur!--Let not his last hearing of Elinor be disgrace! Tell him, on the contrary, that his friendship shall not be thrown away; nor his arguments be forgotten, or unavailing: no! I will weigh every opinion, every sentiment that has fallen from him, as if every word, unpolluted by human ignorance or informity, had dropt straight from heaven! I will meditate upon religion: I will humble myself to court resignation. I will fly hence, to avoid all temptation of ever seeing him more!--and to distract my wretchedness by new scenes. Oh Albert!--I will earn thy esteem by acquiescence in my lot, that here,--even here,--I may taste the paradise of alluring thee to include me in thy view of happiness hereafter!'

Her foreign servant, then, came in view, and she made a motion to him with her hand for her carriage. She awaited it in profound mental absorption, and, when it arrived, placed herself in it without speaking.

Juliet, full of tender pity, could no longer forbear saying, 'Adieu, Madam! and may peace re-visit your generous heart!'

Elinor, surprized and softened, looked at her with an expression of involuntary admiration, as she answered, 'I believe you to be good, Ellis!--I exonerate you from all delusory arts; and, internally, I never thought you guilty,--or I had never feared you! Fool! mad fool, that I have been, I am my own executioner! my distracting impatience to learn the depth of my danger, was what put you together! taught you to know, to appreciate one another! With my own precipitate hand, I have dug the gulph into which I am fallen! Your dignified patience, your n.o.ble modesty--Oh fatal Ellis!--presented a contrast that plunged a dagger into all my efforts! Rash, eager ideot! I conceived suspense to be my greatest bane!--Oh fool! eternal fool!--self-willed, and self-destroying!--for the single thrill of one poor moment's returning doubt--I would not suffer martyrdom!'

She wept, and hid her face within the carriage; but, holding out her hand to Juliet, 'Adieu, Ellis!' she cried, 'I struggle hardly not to wish you any ill; and I have never given you my malediction: yet Oh!--that you had never been born!'--

She s.n.a.t.c.hed away her hand, and precipitately drew up all the blinds, to hide her emotion; but, presently, letting one of them down, called out, with resumed vivacity, and an air of gay defiance, 'Marry him, Ellis!--marry him at once! I have always felt that I should be less mad, if my honour called upon me for reason!--my honour and my pride!'

The groom demanded orders.

'Drive to the end of the world!' she answered, impatiently, 'so you ask me no questions!' and, forcibly adding, 'Farewell, too happy Ellis!' she again drew up all the blinds, and, in a minute, was out of sight.

Juliet deplored her fate with the sincerest concern; and ruminated upon her virtues, and attractive qualities, till their drawbacks diminished from her view, and left nothing but unaffected wonder, that Harleigh could resist them: 'twas a wonder, nevertheless, that every feeling of her heart, in defiance of every conflict, rose, imperiously, to separate from regret.

At the cottage, she found her recovered property, which she now concluded,--for her recollection was gone,--that she had dropt upon her entrance into the room occupied by Harleigh, before she had perceived that it was not empty.

Here, too, almost immediately afterwards, her messenger returned with a letter, which had remained more than a week at the post-office; whither it had been sent back by the farmer, who had refused to risk advancing the postage.

The letter was from Gabriella, and sad, but full of business. She had just received a hurrying summons from Mr de ----, her husband, to join him at Teignmouth, in Devonshire; and, for family-reasons, which ought not to be resisted, to accompany him abroad. Mr de ---- had been brought by an accidental conveyance to Torbay; whence, through a peculiarly favourable opportunity, he was to sail to his place of destination. He charged her to use the utmost expedition; and, to spare the expence of a double journey, and the difficulties of a double pa.s.sport, for and from London, he should procure permission to meet her at Teignmouth; where they might remain till their vessel should be ready; the town of Brixham, within Torbay, being filled with sailors, and unfit for female residence.

Gabriella owned, that she had nothing substantial, nor even rational, to oppose to this plan; though her heart would be left in the grave, the English grave of her adored child. She had relinquished, therefore, her shop, and paid the rent, and her debts; and obtained money for the journey by the sale of all her commodities. She then tenderly entreated, if no insurmountable obstacles forbid it, that Juliet would be of their party; and gave the direction of Mr de ---- at Teignmouth.

Not a moment could Juliet hesitate upon joining her friend; though whether or not she should accompany her abroad, she left for decision at their meeting. She greatly feared the delay in receiving the letter might make her arrive too late; but the experiment was well worth trial; and she reached the beautifully situated small town of Teignmouth the next morning.

She drove to the lodging of which Gabriella had given the direction; where she had the affliction to learn, that the lady whom she described, and her husband, had quitted Teignmouth the preceding evening for Torbay.

She instantly demanded fresh horses, for following them; but the postilion said, that he must return directly to Exeter, with his chaise; and enquired where she would alight. Where she might most speedily, she answered, find means to proceed.

The postilion drove her, then, to a large lodging-house; but the town was so full of company, as it was the season for bathing, that there was no chaise immediately ready; and she was obliged to take possession of a room, till some horses returned.

As soon as she had deposited her baggage, she resolved upon walking back to the late lodging of Gabriella, to seek some further information.

In re-pa.s.sing a gallery, which led from her chamber to the stairs, she perceived, upon a band-box, left at the half-closed door of what appeared to be the capital apartment, the loved name of Lady Aurora Granville.

Joy, hope, fondness, and every pleasurable emotion, danced suddenly in her breast; and, chacing away, by surprize, all fearful caution, irresistibly impelled her to push open the door.

All possibility of concealment was, she knew, now at an end; and, with it, finished her long forbearance. How sweet to cast herself, at length, under so benign a protection! to build upon the unalterable sweetness of Lady Aurora for a consolatory reception, and openly to claim her support!

Filled with these delighting ideas, she gently entered the room. It was empty; but, the door to an inner apartment being open, she heard the soft voice of Lady Aurora giving directions to some servant.

While she hesitated whether, at once, to venture on, or to send in some message, a chambermaid, coming out with another band-box, shut the inner door.

The dress of Juliet was no longer such as to make her appearance in a capital apartment suspicious; and the chambermaid civily enquired whom she was pleased to want.

'Lady Aurora Granville,' she hesitatingly answered; adding that she would tap at her ladyship's door herself, and begging that the maid would not wait.

The maid, busy and active, hurried off. Quickly, then, though softly, Juliet stept forward; but at the door, trembling and full of fears, she stopt short; and the sight of pen, ink, and paper upon a table, determined her to commit her attempt to writing.

Seizing a sheet of paper, without sitting down, and in a hand scarcely legible, she began,

'Is Lady Aurora Granville still the same Lady Aurora, the kind, the benignant, the indulgent Lady Aurora,--' when the sound of another voice, a voice more discordant, if possible, than that of Lady Aurora had been melodious, reached her ear from under the window: it was that of Mrs Howel.

As shaking now with terrour as before she had been trembling with hope, she rolled up her paper; and was hurrying it into her work-bag, which had been returned to her by Harleigh; when the chambermaid, re-entering the room, stared at her with some surprize, demanding whether she had seen her ladyship.

'No; ... I believe ... she is occupied,' Juliet, stammering, answered; and flew along the gallery back to her chamber.

That Lady Aurora should be under the care of Mrs Howel, who was the nearest female relation of Lord Denmeath, could give no surprize to Juliet; but the impulse which had urged her forward, had only painted to her a precious interview with Lady Aurora alone; for how venture to reveal herself in presence of so hard, so inimical a witness? The very idea, joined to the terrible apprehension of irritating Lord Denmeath, to aid some new attack from her legal persecutor; so damped her rising joy, so repressed her buoyant hopes, that, to avoid the insupportable repet.i.tion of injurious interrogatories, painful explanations, and insulting incredulity, she decided, if she could join Gabriella at Torbay, to accompany her to her purposed retreat; and there to await either intelligence of the Bishop, or an open summons from her own family.

She hastened, therefore, to the late lodging of Gabriella; where, upon a more minute investigation, she found, that a message had been left, in case a lady should call to enquire for Madame de ----, to say, that the small vessel in which M. de ---- and herself were humanely to be received as pa.s.sengers, was ready to sail; and to promise to write upon their landing; and to endeavour to fix upon some means of re-union. The lady, the lodging-people said, had lost all hope of her friend's arrival, but had left that message in case of accidents.

More eagerly than ever, Juliet now enquired for any kind of carriage; but the town was full, and every vehicle was engaged till the next morning.

The next morning opened with a new and cruel disappointment: the chambermaid came with excuses, that no chaise could be had, till towards evening, as the Honourable Mrs Howel had engaged all the horses, to carry herself and her people to Chudleigh-park.

Dreadful to the impatience of Juliet was such a loss of time; yet she shrunk from all appeal, upon her prior rights, with Mrs Howel.

Still, not to render impossible, before her departure, an interview, after which her heart was sighing, with Lady Aurora, she addressed to her a few lines.