At five o’clock, on the following morning, the house of Miss Matson was disturbed, by a hurrying message from Elinor, demanding to see Miss Ellis without delay. Ellis, arose, with the utmost trepidation: it was the beginning of May, and brightly light; and she accompanied the servant back to the house.
She found all the family in the greatest disorder, from the return of another messenger, who had been forwarded to Mr Harleigh, with the unexpected news that that gentleman had quitted Brighthelmstone. The intelligence was conveyed in a letter, which he had left at the hotel, for Miss Maple; and in which another was enclosed for Elinor. Mrs Maple had positively refused to be the bearer of such unwelcome tidings to the sick room; protesting that she could not risk, before the surgeon and the nurse, the rude expression which her poor niece might utter; and could still less hazard imparting such irritating information tête à tête.
‘Why, then,’ said Ireton, ‘should not Miss Ellis undertake the job? Nobody has had a deeper share in the business.’
This idea was no sooner started, than it was seized by Mrs Maple; who was over-joyed to elude the unpleasant task imposed upon her by Harleigh; and almost equally gratified to mortify, or distress, a person whom she had been led, by numberless small circumstances, which upon little minds operate more forcibly than essential ones, to consider as a source of personal disgrace to her own dignity and judgement. Deaf, therefore, to the remonstrances of Ellis, upon whom she forced the letter, she sent for Mr Naird, charged him to watch carefully by the side of her poor niece, desired to be called if any thing unhappy should take place; and, complaining of a violent head-ache, retired to lie down.
Ellis, terrified at this tremendous commission, and convinced that the feelings and situation of Elinor were too publicly known for any attempt at secresy, applied to Mr Naird for counsel how to proceed.
Mr Naird answered that, in cases where, as in the present instance, the imagination was yet more diseased than the body, almost any certainty was less hurtful than suspense. ‘Nevertheless, with so excentrical a genius,’ he added, ‘nothing must be risked abruptly: if, therefore, as I presume, this letter is to acquaint the young lady, with the proper modifications, that Mr Harleigh will have nothing to say to her; you must first let her get some little inkling of the matter by circumstances and surmizes, that the fact may not rush upon her without warning: keep, therefore, wholly out of her way, till the tumult of her wonder and her doubts, will make any species of explication medicinal.’
She had certainly, he added, some new project in contemplation; for, after extorting from her, the preceding evening, a promise that she would try to sleep, he heard her, when she believed him gone, exclaim, from Cato’s soliloquy:
‘Sleep? Ay, yes,—This once I’ll favour thee,
That may awaken’d soul may take its flight
Replete with all its pow’rs, and big with life,
An offering fit for ... Glory, Love, ... and Harleigh!’
‘Our kind-hearted young ladies of Sussex,’ continued Mr Naird, ‘are as much scandalized that Mr Harleigh should have the insensibility to resist love so heroic, as their more prudent mammas that he should so publicly be made its object. No men, however,—at least none on this side the Channel,—can wonder that he should demur at venturing upon a treaty for life, with a lady so expert in foreign politics, as to make an experiment, in her own proper person, of the new atheistical and suicidical doctrines, that those ingenious gentlemen, on t’other side the water, are now so busily preaching for their fellow-countrymen’s destruction.1 Challenging one’s existence for every quarrel with one’s Will; and running one’s self through the Body for every affront to one’s Mind; used to be thought peculiar to the proud and unbending humour of John Bull; but John did it rarely enough to make it a subject of gossipping, and news-paper squibs, for at least a week. Our merry neighbours, on the contrary, now once they have set about it, do the job with an air, and a grace, that shew us we are as drowsy in our desperation, as we are phlegmatic in our amusements. They talk of it wherever they go; write of it whenever they hold a pen; and are so piqued to think that we got the start of them, in beginning the game first, that they pop off more now in a month, than we do in a year: and I don’t in the least doubt, that their intention is to go on with the same briskness, till they have made the balance even.’
Looking then archly at Ellis, ‘However clever,’ he added, ‘this young lady may be; and she seems an adept in their school of turning the world upside down; she did not shew much skill in human nature, when she fired such a broadside at the heart of the man she loved, at the very instant that he had forgotten all the world, in his hurry to fire one himself upon the heart of another woman.’
Ellis blushed, but was silent; and Mrs Golding, Elinor’s maid, came, soon after, to hasten Mr Naird to her mistress; who, persuaded, she said, by their non-appearance, that Mr Harleigh had eloped with Miss Ellis, was preparing to dress herself; and was bent to pursue them to the utmost extremity of the earth.
Mr Naird, then, entering the room, heard her in the agitated voice of feverish exultation, call out, ‘Joy! Joy and peace, to my soul! They are gone off together!—’Tis just what I required, to “spur my almost blunted purpose!—”’
Ellis, beckoned by Mr Naird, now appeared.
Elinor was struck with astonishment; and her air lost something of its wildness. ‘Is Harleigh,’ she cried, ‘here too?’
Ellis durst not reply; nor, still less, deliver the letter; which she dropt unseen upon a table.
Amazed at this silence, Elinor repeated her enquiries: ‘Why does he not come to me? Why will he not answer me?’
‘Nay, I should think it a little odd, myself,’ said Mr Naird, ‘if I did not take into consideration, that our hearing requires an approximation that our wishes can do without.’
‘Is he not yet arrived, then?—Impenetrable Harleigh! And can he sleep? O noble heart of marble! polished, white, exquisite—but unyielding!—Ellis, send to him yourself! Call him to me immediately! It is but for an instant! Tell him it is but for an instant.’
Ellis tremblingly drew back. The impatience of Elinor was redoubted, and Mr Naird thought proper to confess that Mr Harleigh could not be found.
Her vehemence was then converted into derision, and, with a contemptuous laugh, ‘You would make me believe, perhaps,’ she cried, ‘that he has left Brighthelmstone? Spare your ingenuity a labour so absurd, and my patience so useless a disgust. From me, indeed, he may be gone! for his soul shrinks from the triumph in which it ought to glory! ’Tis pity! Yet in him every thing seems right; every thing is becoming. Even the narrow feelings of prudence, that curb the expansions of greatness, in him seem graceful, nay noble! Ah! who is like him? The poor grovelling wretches that call themselves his fellow creatures, sink into nothingness before him, as if beings of another order! Where is he? My soul sickens to see him once more, and then to be extinct!’
No one venturing to speak, she again resolved to seek him in person; convinced, she said, that, since Ellis remained, he could not be far off. This appeared to Mr Naird the moment for producing the letter.
At sight of the hand-writing of Harleigh, addressed, to herself, every other feeling gave way to rapturous joy. She snatched the letter from Mr Naird, blew it all around, as if to disperse the contagion of any foreign touch, and then, in a transport of delight, pressed it to her lips, to her heart, and again to her lips, with devouring kisses. She would not read it, she declared, till night: all she experienced of pleasure was too precious and too rare, not to be lengthened and enjoyed to its utmost possible extent; yet, nearly at the same moment, she broke the seal, and ordered every one to quit the room; that the air which would vibrate with words of Harleigh, should be uncontaminated by any breath but her own. They all obeyed; though Mr Naird, fearing what might ensue, stationed himself where, unsuspectedly, he could observe her motions. Eagerly, rapidly, and without taking breath till she came to the conclusion, she then read aloud the following lines:
‘To Miss Joddrel.
‘I fly you, O Elinor, not to irritate those feelings I dare not hope to soothe! My heart recoils, with prophetic terrour, from the summons which you have issued for this morning. I know you too noble to accept, as you have shewn yourself too sincere to present, a heartless hand; but will you, therefore, blight the rest of my existence, by making me the cause of your destruction? Will you only seek relief to your sufferings, by means that must fix indelible horrour on your survivors? Will you call for peace and rest to yourself, by an action that must nearly rob me of both?
‘Where death is voluntary, without considering our ultimate responsibility, have we none that is immediate? For ourselves only do we exist? No, generous Elinor, such has not been your plan. For ourselves alone, then, should we die? Shall we seek to serve and to please merely when present, that we may be served and pleased again? Is there no disinterested attachment, that would suffer, to spare pain to others? that would endure sooner than inflict?
‘If to die be, as you hold, though as I firmly disbelieve, eternal sleep, would you wish the traces that may remain of that period in which you thought yourself awake, to be marked, for others, by blessings, or by misfortune? Would you desire those whom you have known and favoured whilst amongst them, gratefully to cherish your remembrance, or to shrink with horrour from its recollection? Would you bequeath to them the pleasing image of your liberal kindness, or the terrific one of your despairing vengeance?
‘To you, to whom death seems the termination of all, the extinguisher, the absorber of unaccounted life, this airy way of meeting, of invoking it, may appear suitable:—to me, who look forward to corporeal dissolution but as to the opening to spiritual being, and the period of retribution for our past terrestrial existence; to me it seems essential to prepare for it with as much awe as hope, as much solicitude as confidence.
‘Wonder not, then, that, with ideas so different, I should fly witnessing the crisis which so intrepidly you invite. Would you permit your cooler reason to take the governance of your too animated feelings, with what alacrity, and what delight, should I seek your generous friendship!
‘The Grave, you say, is the end of All, of soul and of body alike!
‘Pause, Elinor!—should you be mistaken!...
‘Pause!—The less you believe yourself immortal, the less you should deem yourself infallible.
‘You call upon us all, in this enlightened age, to set aside our long, old, and hereditary prejudices. Give the example with the charge, in setting aside those that, new, wilful, and self-created, have not even the apology of time or habit to make them sacred; and listen, O Elinor, to the voice and dictates of religion! Harden not your heart against convictions that may pour balm into all its wounds!
‘Consent to see some learned and pious divine.
‘If, upon every science, every art, every profession, you respect the opinions of those who have made them their peculiar study; and prefer their authority, and the result of their researches; to the sallies, the loose reasoning, and accidental knowledge of those who dispute at large, from general, however brilliant conceptions; from partial, however ingenious investigations; why in theology alone must you distrust the fruits of experience? the proofs of examination? the judgement of habitual reflexion?
‘Consent, then, to converse with some devout, yet enlightened clergyman. Hear him patiently, meditate upon his doctrine impartially; and you will yet, O Elinor, consent to live, and life again will find its reviving, however chequered, enjoyments.
‘Youth, spirits, fortune, the liveliest parts, the warmest heart, are yours. You have only to look around you to see how rarely such gifts are thus concentrated; and, grateful for your lot, you will make it, by blessing others, become a blessing to yourself: and you will not, Elinor, harrow to the very soul, the man who flattered himself to have found in you the sincerest of friends, by a stroke more severe to his peace than he could owe to his bitterest enemy.
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