The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 4 of 5). Burney Fanny

The wildness of her character, the eccentricity of her ideas, and the violence of all her feelings; with her extraordinary understanding – parts, I ought to say; for understanding implies rather what is solid than brilliant; – joined to the goodness of her heart, and the generosity, frankness, and openness of her nature, excited at once an anxiety for my brother, and an interest for herself, that gave occasion to the most affectionate animadversion on my part, and produced alternate defence or concession on hers. But her disdain of flattery, or even of civil acquiescence, made my freedom, opposed to the courteous complaisance which my brother deemed due to his situation of her humble servant, strike her in a point of view … that has been unhappy for us all three! Yet this was a circumstance which I had never suspected, – for, where no wish is met, remark often sleeps; – and I had been wholly unobservant, till you – '

      Called from the deep interest with which she had involuntarily listened to the relation of his connection with Elinor, by this sudden transition to herself, Juliet started; but he went on.

      'Till you were an inmate of the same house! till I saw her strange consternation, when she found me conversing with you; her rising injustice when, with the respect and admiration which you inspired, I mentioned you; her restless vigilance to interrupt whatever communication I attempted to have with you; her sudden fits of profound yet watchful taciturnity, when I saw you in her presence; – '

      'I may tell her,' interrupted Juliet, disturbed, 'that you will wait upon her according to her request?'

      'When you,' cried he, smiling, 'are her messenger, she must not expect quite so quick, quite so categorical an answer! I must first – '

      'On the contrary, her impatience will be insupportable if I do not relieve it immediately.'

      She would have opened the door, but, preventing her, 'Can you indeed believe,' he cried, with vivacity; 'is it possible you can believe, that, having once caught a ray of light, to illumine and cheer the dread and nearly impervious darkness, that so long and so blackly overclouded all my prospects, I can consent, can endure to be cast again into desolate obscurity?'

      Juliet, blushing, and conscious of his allusion to her reception of him in the church yard, for which, without naming Sir Lyell Sycamore, she knew not how to account, again protested that she must not be detained.

      Still, however, half reproachfully, half laughingly, stopping her, 'And is it thus,' he cried, 'that you summon me to Brighthelmstone, – only to mock my obedience, and disdain to hear me?'

      'I, Sir? – I, summon you?'

      'Nay, see my credentials!'

      He presented to her the following note, written in an evidently feigned hand:

      'If Mr Harleigh will take a ramble to the church-yard upon the Hill, at Brighthelmstone, next Thursday morning, at five o'clock, he will there meet a female fellow-traveller, now in the greatest distress, who solicits his advice and assistance, to extricate her from her present intolerable abode.'

      Deeply colouring, 'And could Mr Harleigh,' she cried, 'even for a moment believe, – suppose, – '

      He interrupted her, with an air of tender respect. 'No; I did not, indeed, dare believe, dare suppose that an honour, a trust such as might be implied by an appeal like this, came from you! Yet for you I was sure it was meant to pass; and to discover by whom it was devised, and for what purpose, irresistibly drew me hither, though with full conviction of imposition. I came, however, pre-determined to watch around your dwelling, at the appointed hour, ere I repaired to the bidden place. But what was my agitation when I thought I saw you! I doubted my senses. I retreated; I hung back; your face was shaded by your head-dress; – yet your air, – your walk, – was it possible I could be deceived? Nevertheless, I resolved not to speak, nor to approach you, till I saw whether you proceeded to the church-yard. I was by no means free from suspicion of some new stratagem of Elinor; for, fatigued with concealment, I was then publicly at my house upon Bagshot Heath, where the note had reached me. Yet her distance from Brighthelmstone for so early an hour, joined to intelligence which I had received some time ago, – for you will not imagine that the period which I spend without seeing, I spend also without hearing of you? – that you had been observed, – and more than once, – at that early hour, in the church-yard – '

      'True!' cried Juliet, eagerly, 'at that hour I have frequently met, or accompanied, a friend, a beloved friend! thither; and, in her name, I had even then, when I saw you, been deluded: not for a walk; a ramble; not upon any party of pleasure; but to visit a little tomb, which holds the regretted remains of the darling and only child of that dear, unhappy friend!'

      She wept. Harleigh, extremely touched, said, 'You have, then, a friend here? – Is it, – may I ask? – is it the person you so earnestly sought upon your arrival? – Is your anxiety relieved? – your embarrassment? – your suspence? – your cruel distress? – Will you not give me, at length, some little satisfaction? Can you wonder that my forbearance is worn out? – Can my impatience offend you? – If I press to know your situation, it is but with the desire to partake it! – If I solicit to hear your name – it is but with the hope … that you will suffer me to change it!'

      He would have taken her hand, but, drawing back, and wiping her eyes, though irresistibly touched, 'Offend?' she repeated; 'Oh far, – far!.. but why will you recur to a subject that ought so long since to have been exploded? – while another, – an essential one, calls for all my attention? – The last packet which you left with me, you must suffer me instantly to return; the first, – the first – ' She stammered, coloured, and then added, 'The first, – I am shocked to own, – I must defer returning yet a little longer!'

      'Defer?' ardently repeated Harleigh. 'Ah! why not condescend to think, at least, another language, if not to speak it? Why not anticipate, in kind idea, at least, the happy period, – for me! when I may be permitted to consider as included, and mutual in our destinies, whatever hitherto – '

      'Oh hold! – Oh Mr Harleigh!' interrupted Juliet, in a voice of anguish. 'Let no errour, no misconstruction, of this terrible sort, – no inference, no expectation, thus wide from all possible reality, add to my various misfortunes the misery of remorse!'

      'Remorse? – Gracious powers! What can you mean?'

      'That I have committed the most dreadful of mistakes, – a mistake that I ought never to forgive myself, if, in the relief from immediate perplexity, which I ventured to owe to a momentary, and, I own, an intentionally unacknowledged, usage of some of the notes which you forced into my possession, I have given rise to a belief, – to an idea, – to – '

      She hesitated, and blushed so violently, that she could not finish her phrase; but Harleigh appeared thunderstruck, and was wholly silent. She looked down, abashed, and added, 'The instant, by any possible means, – by work, by toil, by labour, – nothing will be too severe, – all will be light and easy, – that can rectify, – that – '

      She could not proceed; and Harleigh, somewhat recovered by the view of her confusion, gently, though reproachfully, said, 'All, then, will be preferable to the slightest, smallest trust in me? – And is this from abhorrence? – or do you deem me so ungenerous as to believe that I should take unworthy advantage of being permitted to offer you even the most trivial service?'

      'No, no, oh, no!' with quickness cried Juliet; 'but the more generous you may be, the more readily you may imagine – '

      She stopt, at a loss how to finish.

      'That you would be generous, too?' cried Harleigh, revived and smiling.

      She could not refrain from a smile herself, but hastily added, 'My conduct must be liable to no inference of any sort. Adieu, Sir. I will deliver you the packet in Miss Joddrel's room.'

      Her hand was upon the lock, but his foot, fixed firmly against the door, impeded its being opened, while he exclaimed, 'I cannot part with you thus! You must clear this terrific obscurity, that threatens to involve me, once more, in the horrours of excruciating suspense! – Why that cruel expression of displeasure? Can you think that the moment of hope, – however brief, however unintentional, however accidental, – can ever be obliterated from my thoughts?