‘For Albert Harleigh.
‘I am sick of the world, yet still I crawl upon its surface. I scorn and defy the whole human race, yet doom myself to be numbered in its community. While you, Albert Harleigh, you whom alone, of all that live and breath, I prize, — you, even your sight, I, from this moment, eternally renounce! Such the mighty ascendance of the passion which you have inspired, that I will sooner forego that only blessing — though the universe without it is a hateful blank to my eyes — than risk opposing the sway of your opinion, or suffer you to think me ignoble, though you know me to be enslaved. O Harleigh! how far from all that is vile and debasing is the flame, the pure, though ardent flame that you have kindled! To its animating influence I am indebted for one precious moment of heavenly truth; and for having snatched from the grave, which in its own nothingness will soon moulder away my frame, the history of my feelings.
‘I have conquered the tyrant false pride; I have mocked the puerilities of education; I have set at nought and defeated even the monster custom; but you, O Harleigh! you I obey, without waiting for a command; you, I seek to humour, without aspiring to please! To you, my free soul, my liberated mind, my new-born ideas, all yield, slaves, willing slaves, to what I only conceive to be your counsel, only conjecture to be your judgment; that since I have failed to touch your heart, after having opened to you my own, a total separation will be due to my fame for the world, due to delicacy for myself....
‘Be it so, Albert ... we will part! — Though my fame, in my own estimation, would be elevated to glory; by the publication of a choice that does me honour; though my delicacy would be gratified, would be sanctified, by shewing the purity of a passion as spotless as it is hopeless — yet will I hide myself in the remotest corner of the universe, rather than resist you even in thought. O Albert! how sovereign is your power! — more absolute than the tyranny of the controlling world; more arbitrary than prescription; more invincible than the prejudices of ages! — You, I cannot resist! you, I shall only breathe to adore! — to bear all you bear, — the tortures of disappointment, the abominations of incertitude; to say, Harleigh himself endures this! we suffer in unison! our woes are sympathetic! — O word to charm all the rigour of calamity!.... Harleigh, I exist but to know how your destiny will be fulfilled, and then to come from my concealment, and bid you a last farewell! to leave upon the record of your memory the woes of my passion; and then consign myself for ever to my native oblivion. Till then, adieu, Albert Harleigh, adieu!
‘Elinor Joddrel.’
Harleigh read this letter with a disturbance that, for a while, wholly absorbed his mind in its contents. ‘Misguided, most unfortunate, yet admirable Elinor!’ he cried, ‘what a terrible perversion is here of intellect! what a confusion of ideas! what an inextricable chaos of false principles, exaggerated feelings, and imaginary advancement in new doctrines of life!’
He paused, thoughtfully and sadly, till Ellis, though sorry to interrupt his meditations, begged his directions what to say upon returning to the house.
‘What her present plan may be,’ he answered, ‘is by no means clear; but so boundless is the licence which the followers of the new systems allow themselves, that nothing is too dreadful to apprehend. Religion is, if possible, still less respected than law, prescriptive rights, or any of the hitherto acknowledged ties of society. There runs through her letter, as there ran through her discourse this morning, a continual intimation of her disbelief in a future state; of her defiance of all revealed religion; of her high approbation of suicide. — The fatal deed from which you rescued her, had no excuse to plead from sudden desperation; she came prepared, decided, either to disprove her suspicions, or to end her existence! — poor infatuated, yet highly gifted Elinor! — what can be done to save her; to recall her to the use of her reason, and the exercise of her duties?’
‘Will you not, Sir, see her? Will you not converse with her upon these points, in which her mind and understanding are so direfully warped?’
‘Certainly I will; and I beg you to entreat for my admission. I must seek to dissuade her from the wild and useless scheme of seclusion and concealment. But as time now presses, permit me to speak, first, upon subjects which press also, — press irresistibly, unconquerably! — Your plan of becoming a governess—’
‘I dare not stay, now, to discuss any thing personal; yet I cannot refrain from seizing a moment that may not again offer, for making my sincerest apologies upon a subject — and a declaration — I shall never think of without confusion. I feel all its impertinence, its inutility, its presumption; but you will make, I hope, allowance for the excess of my alarm. I could devise no other expedient.’
‘Tell me,’ cried he, ‘I beg, was it for her ... or for me that it was uttered? Tell me the extent of its purpose!’
‘You cannot, surely, Sir, imagine — cannot for a moment suppose, that I was guided by such egregious vanity as to believe—’ She stopt, extremely embarrassed.
‘Vanity,’ said he, ‘is out of the question, after what has just passed; spare then, I beseech, your own candour, as well as my suspense, all unnecessary pain.’
‘I entreat, I conjure you, Sir,’ cried Ellis, now greatly agitated, ‘speak only of my commission!’
‘Certainly,’ he answered, ‘this is not the period I should have chosen, for venturing upon so delicate — I had nearly said so perilous a subject; but, so imperiously called upon, I could neither be insincere, nor pusillanimous enough, to disavow a charge which every feeling rose to confess! — Otherwise — just now, — my judgment, my sense of propriety, — all in the dark as I am — would sedulously, scrupulously, have constrained my forbearance, till I knew—’ He stopt, paused, and then expressively, yet gently added, ‘to whom I addressed myself!’
Ellis coloured highly as she answered, ‘I beg you, Sir, to consider all that was drawn from you this morning, or all that might be inferred, as perfectly null — unpronounced and unthought.’
‘No!’ cried he with energy, ‘no! To have postponed an explanation would have been prudent, — nay right: — but every sentiment of my mind, filled with trust in your worth, and reverence for your virtues, forbids now, a recantation! Imperious circumstances precipitated me to your feet — but my heart was there already!’
So extreme was the emotion with which Harleigh uttered these words, that he perceived not their effect upon Ellis, till gasping for breath, and nearly fainting, she sunk upon a chair; when so livid a paleness overspread her face, and so deadly a cold seemed to chill her blood, that, but for a friendly burst of tears, which ensued, her vital powers appeared to be threatened with immediate suspension.
Harleigh was instantly at her feet; grieved at her distress, yet charmed with a thousand nameless, but potent sensations, that whispered to every pulse of his frame, that a sensibility so powerful could spring only from too sudden a concussion of pleasure with surprise.
He had hardly time to breathe forth a protestation, when the sight of his posture brought back the blood to her cheeks, and force to her limbs; and, hastily rising, with looks of blushing confusion, yet with a sigh that spoke internal anguish, ‘I cannot attempt,’ she cried, ‘Mr Harleigh, — I could not, indeed, attempt — to express my sense of your generous good opinion! — yet — if you would not destine me to eternal misery, you must fly me — till you can forget this scene — as you would wish me to fly perdition!’
She rose to be gone; but Harleigh stopt her, crying, in a tone of amazement, ‘Is it possible, — can it be possible, that with intellects such as yours, clear, penetrating, admirable, you can conceive eternal misery will be your portion, if you break a forced engagement made with a mad woman? — and made but to prevent her immediate self-destruction?’
Shaking her head, but averting her eyes, Ellis would neither speak not be detained; and Harleigh, who durst not follow her, remained confounded.
VOLUME II.
CHAPTER XX
Ellis hastened to the house; but her weeping eyes, and
disordered state of mind, unfitted her for an immediate encounter with Elinor, and she went straight to her own chamber; where, in severe meditation upon her position, her duties, and her calls for exertion, she ‘communed with her own heart.’ Although unable, while involved in uncertainties, to arrange any regular plan of general conduct, conscience, that unerring guide, where consulted with sincerity, pointed out to her, that, after what had passed, the first step demanded by honour, was to quit the house, the spot, and the connexions, in which she was liable to keep alive any intercourse with Harleigh. What strikes me to be right, she internally cried, I must do; I may then have some chance for peace, ... however little for happiness!
Her troubled spirits thus appeased, she descended to inform Elinor of the result of her commission. She had received, indeed, no direct message; but Harleigh meant to desire a conference, and that desire would quiet, she hoped, and occupy the ideas of Elinor, so as to divert her from any minute investigation into the circumstances by which it had been preceded.
The door of the dressing room was locked, and she tapped at it for admission in vain; she concluded that Elinor was in her bed-chamber, to which there was no separate entrance, and tapped louder, that she might be heard; but without any better success. She remained, most uneasily, in the landing-place, till the approaching footstep of Harleigh forced her away.
Upon re-entering her own chamber, and taking up her needle-work, she found a letter in its folds.
The direction was merely To Ellis. This assured her that it was from Elinor, and she broke the seal, and read the following lines.
‘All that now remains for the ill-starred Elinor, is to fly the whole odious human race. What can it offer to me but disgust and aversion? Despoiled of the only scheme in which I ever gloried, that of sacrificing in death, to the man whom I adore, the existence I vainly wished to devote to him in life; — despoiled of this — By whom despoiled? — by you! Ellis, — by you! — Yet — Oh incomprehensible! — You, refuse Albert Harleigh! — Never, never could I have believed in so senseless an apathy, but for the changed countenance which shewed the belief in it of Harleigh.
‘If your rejection, Ellis, is that you may marry Lord Melbury, which alone makes its truth probable — you have done what is natural and pardonable, though heartless and mercenary; and you will offer me an opportunity to see how Harleigh — Albert Harleigh, will conduct himself when — like me! — he lives without hope.
‘If, on the contrary, you have uttered that rejection, from the weak folly of dreading to witness a sudden and a noble end, to a fragile being, sighing for extinction, — on your own head fall your perjury and its consequences!
‘I go hence immediately. No matter whither.
‘Should I be pursued, I am aware I may soon be traced: but to what purpose? I am independent alike in person, fortune, and mind; I cannot be brought back by force, and I will not be moved by idle persuasion, or hacknied remonstrance. No! blasted in all my worldly views, I will submit to worldly slavery no longer. My aunt, therefore, will do well not to demand one whom she cannot claim.
‘Tell her this.
‘Harleigh —
‘But no, — Harleigh will not follow me! He would deem himself bound to me ever after, by all that men hold honourable amongst one another, if, through any voluntary measure of his own, the shadow of a censure could be cast upon Elinor.
‘Oh, perfect Harleigh! I will not involve your generous delicacy — for not yours, not even yours would I be, by the foul constraint of worldly etiquette! I should disdain to owe your smallest care for me to any menace, or to any meanness.
‘Let him, not, therefore, Ellis, follow me; and I here pledge myself to preserve my miserable existence, till I see him again, in defiance of every temptation to disburthen myself of its loathsome weight. By the love I bear to him, I pledge myself!
‘Tell him this.
‘Elinor Joddrel.’
Ellis read this letter in speechless consternation. To be the confident of so extraordinary a flight, seemed danger to her safety, while it was horrour to her mind.
The two commissions with which, so inconsiderately, she was charged, how could she execute? To seek Harleigh again, she thought utterly wrong: and how deliver any message to Mrs Maple, without appearing to be an accomplice in the elopement? She could only prove her innocence by shewing the letter itself, which, in clearing her from that charge, left one equally heavy to fall upon her, of an apparently premeditated design to engage, or, as the world might deem it, inveigle, the young Lord Melbury into marriage. It was evident that upon that idea alone, rested the belief of Elinor in a faithful adherence to the promised rejection; and that the letter which she had addressed to Ellis, was but meant as a memorandum of terrour for its observance.
Not long afterwards, Selina came eagerly to relate, that the dinner-bell having been rung, and the family being assembled, and the butler having repeatedly tapt at the door of sister Elinor, to hurry her; Mrs Maple, not alarmed, because accustomed to her inexactitude, had made every body dine: after which, Tomlinson was sent to ask whether sister Elinor chose to come down to the dessert; but he brought word that he could not make either her or Mrs Golding speak. Selina was then desired to enquire the reason of such strange taciturnity; but could not obtain any answer.
Mrs Maple, saying that there was no end to her vagaries, then returned to the drawing-room; concluding, from former similar instances, that, dark, late, and cold as it was, Elinor had walked out with her maid, at the very hour of dinner. But Mr Harleigh, who looked extremely uneasy, requested Selina to see if her sister were not with Miss Ellis.
To this Ellis, by being found alone, was spared any reply; and Selina skipt down stairs to coffee.
How to avoid, or how to sustain the examination which she expected to ensue, occupied the disturbed mind of Ellis, till Selina, in about two hours, returned, exclaiming, ‘Sister Elinor grows odder and odder! do you know she is gone out in the chariot? She ordered it herself, without saying a word to aunt, and got in, with Golding, close to the stables! Tomlinson has just owned it to Mr Harleigh, who was grown quite frightened at her not coming home, now it’s so pitch dark. Tomlinson says she went into the hall herself, and made him contrive it all. But we are no wiser still as to where she is gone.’
The distress of Ellis what course to take, increased every moment as it grew later, and as the family became more seriously alarmed. Her consciousness that there was no chance of the return of Elinor, made her feel as if culpable in not putting an end to fruitless expectation; yet how produce a letter of which every word demanded secresy, when all avowal would be useless, since Elinor could not be forced back?
No one ascended again to her chamber till ten o’clock at night: the confusion in the house was then redoubled, and a footman came hastily up stairs to summon her to Mrs Maple.
She descended with terrour, and found Mrs Maple in the parlour, with Harleigh, Ireton, and Mrs Fenn.
In a voice of the sharpest reprimand, Mrs Maple began to interrogate her: while Harleigh, who could not endure to witness a haughty rudeness which he did not dare combat, taking the arm of Ireton, whom he could still less bear to leave a spectator to a scene of humiliation to Ellis, quitted the room.
Vain, however, was either enquiry or menace; and Mrs Maple, when she found that she could not obtain any information, though she had heard, from Mrs Fenn, that Ellis had passed the morning with her niece, declared that she would no longer keep so dangerous a pauper in the house; and ordered her to be gone with the first appearance of light.
Ellis, courtseying in silence, retired.
In re-passing through the hall, she met Harleigh and Ireton; the former only bowed to her, impeded by his companion from speaking; but Ireton, stopping her, said, ‘O! I have caught you at last! I thought, on my faith, I was always to seek you where you were never to be found. If I had not wanted to do what was right, and proper, and all that, I should have met with you a hundred times; for I never desired to do s
omething that I might just as well let alone, but opportunity offered itself directly.’
Ellis tried to pass him, and he became more serious. ‘It’s an age that I have wanted to see you, and to tell you how prodigiously ashamed I am of all that business. I don’t know how the devil it was, but I went on, tumbling from blunder to blunder, till I got into such a bog, that I could neither stand still, nor make my way out:—’
Ellis, gratified that he would offer any sort of apology, and by no means wishing that he would make it more explicit, readily assured him, that she would think no more upon the subject; and hurried to her chamber: while Harleigh, who stood aloof, thought he observed as much of dignity as of good humour, in her flying any further explanation.
But Mrs Maple, who only meant, by her threat, to intimidate Ellis into a confession of what she knew of the absence, and of the purposes, of Elinor, was so much enraged by her calmness, that she told Mrs Fenn to follow her, with positive orders, that, unless she would own the truth, she should quit the house immediately, though it were in the dead of the night.
Violence so inhuman rather inspired than destroyed fortitude in Ellis, who quietly answered, that she would seek an asylum, till day-light, at the neighbouring farmer’s.
Selina followed, and, embracing her, with many tears, vowed eternal friendship to her; and asked whether she did not think that Lady Aurora would be equally constant.
‘I must hope so!’ she answered, sighing, ‘for what else have I to hope?’
She now made her preparations; yet decided not to depart, unless again commanded; hoping that this gust of passion would pass away, and that she might remain till the morning.
While awaiting, with much inquietude, some new order, Selina, to her great surprise, came jumping into the room, to assure her that all was well, and more than well; for that her aunt not only ceased to desire to send her away directly, but had changed her whole plan, and was foremost now in wishing her to stay.
Complete Works of Frances Burney Page 280