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.
CHAPTER LXXXV
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 passion 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; assure 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 nobler 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 superstitious sophistry, robs me of the only solace that could soothe my parting breath?'