'Lost and bewildered in my fruitless search,'13—
which way must I turn to develop truth? to comprehend my own existence! Oh Albert! – you almost make me wish to rest my perturbed mind where fools alone, I thought, found rest, or hypocrites have seemed to find it, – on Religion!'
'The feeling mind, dear Elinor, has no other serious serenity; no other hold from the black, cheerless, petrifying expectation of nullity. If, then, even a wish of light break through your dark despondence, read, study the Evangelists! – and truth will blaze upon you, with the means to find consolation.'
'Albert, I know now where I am! – You open to me possibilities that overwhelm me! My head seems bursting with fulness of struggling ideas!'
'Give them, Elinor, fair play, and they will soon, in return, give you tranquillity. Reflect only, – that that quality, that faculty, be its nature, its durability, and its purpose what they may, which the world at large agrees to call soul, has its universal comprehension from a something that is felt; not that is proved! Yet who, and where is the Atheist, the Deist, the Infidel of any description, gifted with the means to demonstrate, that, in quitting the body with the parting breath, it is necessarily extinct? that it may not, on the contrary, still BE, when speech and motion are no more? when our flesh is mingled with the dust, and our bones are dispersed by the winds? and BE, as while we yet exist, no part of our body, no single of our senses; never, while we seem to live, visible, yet never, when we seem to die, perishable? May it not, when, with its last sigh, it leaves the body, mingle with that vast expanse of air, which no instrument can completely analyse, and which our imperfect sight views but as empty space? May it not mount to upper regions, and enjoy purified bliss? May not all air be peopled with our departed friends, hovering around us, as sensible as we are unconscious? May not the uncumbered soul watch over those it loves? 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 LXXXVI
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 noble 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 snatched 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.