At this moment, a horseman, who had advanced full gallop, hastily
dismounting, enquired aloud, whether any French gentleman had lately
arrived.
All who were present, pointed to the foreigner; who, not hearing, or
affecting not to hear the demand, began pushing away the women, that he
might follow Juliet.
The horseman, approaching, asked the foreigner his name.
'_Qu'est ce que cela vous fait?_'[10] he answered.
[Footnote 10: 'What is that to you?']
'You must come with me into the inn,' the horseman replied, after
stedfastly examining his face.
The foreigner, with a loud oath, refused to stir.
The horseman, holding out a paper, clapped him upon the shoulder,
saying, that he was a person who had been looked for some time, in
consequence of information which had been lodged against him; and that
he was to be sent out of the kingdom.
This declaration made, he called upon the master of the house to lend
his assistance, for keeping the arrested person in custody, till the
arrival of the proper officers of justice.
The man, at first, could find no vent for his rage, except horrid oaths,
and tremendous imprecations; but, when he was positively seized, with a
menace of being bound hand and foot, if he offered any opposition, he
swore that his wife, at least, should accompany him; and put forth his
hand towards the chaise, to drag out Juliet.
But Juliet was saved from his grasp by the landlady; who humanely, upon
seeing her almost expiring condition, had entered the carriage, during
the dispute, with a viol of sal volatile.
The horseman, who was a peace-officer, said that he had no orders to
arrest any woman. She might come, or stay, as she pleased.
The foreigner vociferously claimed her; uttering execrations against all
who unlawfully withheld her; or would abet her elopement. He would then
have passed round to the other door of the chaise, to seize her by
force; but the peace-officer, who was habitually deaf to any appeal, and
resolute against any resistance; compelled him, though storming, raging,
and swearing, his face distorted with fury, his under-jaw dropt, and his
mouth foaming, to re-enter the inn.
Juliet received neither relief nor fresh pain from what passed. Though
no longer fainting, terrour and excess of misery operated so powerfully
upon her nerves, that his cries assailed her ears but as outrage upon
outrage; and, though clinging to the landlady, with instinctive entreaty
for support, she was so disordered by her recent fainting, and so
absorbed in the belief that she was lost, that she knew not what had
happened; nor suspected any impediment to her forced journey; till the
landlady, now quitting her, advised her to have a room and lie down;
saying that no wife could be expected to follow such a brute of a
husband to jail.
Amazed, she enquired what was meant; and was answered, that her husband
was in the hands of justice.
The violence of the changed, yet mixed sensations, with which she was
now assailed, made every pulse throb with so palpitating a rapidity,
that she felt as if life itself was seeking a vent through every
swelling vein. But, when again she was pressed to enter the house, and
not to accompany her husband to prison; she shuddered, her head was
bowed down with shame; and, making a motion that supplicated for
silence, she seemed internally torn asunder with torturing incertitude
how to act.
During this instant,--it was scarcely more,--of irresolution, the
landlady alighted, and the chaise was driven abruptly from the door. But
Juliet had scarcely had time for new alarm, ere she found that she had
only been removed to make way for another carriage; from the window of
which she caught a glimpse of Sir Jaspar Herrington.
Nor had she escaped his eye; her straw-bonnet having fallen off, without
being missed, while she fainted, her head was wholly without shade.
With all of speed in his power, the Baronet hobbled to the chaise. She
covered her face, sinking with every species of confusion and distress.
'Have I the honour,' he cried, 'to address Miss Granville? The
Honourable Miss Granville?'--
'Good Heaven!--' Juliet astonished, and raising her head, exclaimed.
'If so, I have the dulcet commission,' he continued, 'to escort her to
her brother and sister, Lord Melbury, and Lady Aurora Granville.'
'Is it possible? Is it possible?' cried Juliet, in an ecstacy that
seemed to renovate her whole being: 'I dare not believe it!--Oh Sir
Jaspar! dear, good, kind, generous Sir Jaspar! delude me not, in pity!'
'No, fairest syren!' answered Sir Jaspar, in a rapture nearly equal to
her own; 'if there be any delusion to fear, 'tis poor I must be its
victim!'
'Oh take me, then, at once,--this instant,--this moment,--take me to
them, my benevolent, my noble friend! If, indeed, I have a brother, a
sister,--give me the heaven of their protection!--'
Sir Jaspar, enchanted, invited her to honour him by accepting a seat in
his chaise. With glowing gratitude she complied; though the just
returning roses faded from her cheeks, as she alighted, upon perceiving
Harleigh, aloof and disconsolate, fixed like a statue, upon a small
planted eminence. Yet but momentarily was the whiter hue prevalent, and
her skin, the next instant, burned with blushes of the deepest dye.
This transition was not lost upon Harleigh: his eye caught, and his
heart received it, with equal avidity and anguish. Ah why, thought he,
so sensitive! why, at this period of despair, must I awaken to a
consciousness of the full extent of my calamity! Yet, all his resentment
subsided; to believe that she participated in his sentiments, had a
charm so softening, so all-subduing, that, even in this crisis of
torture and hopelessness, it dissolved his whole soul into tenderness.
Juliet, faintly articulating, 'Oh, let us be gone!' moved, with cast
down eyes, to the carriage of the Baronet; forced, from remaining
weakness, to accept the assistance of his groom; Sir Jaspar not having
strength, nor Harleigh courage, to offer aid.
Sir Jaspar demanded her permission to stop at Salisbury, for his valet
and baggage.
'Any where! any where!' answered the shaking Juliet, 'so I go but to
Lady Aurora!'
Astonished, and thrilled to the soul by these words, Harleigh, who,
unconsciously, had advanced, involuntarily repeated, 'Lady Aurora?--Lady
Aurora Granville?'--
Unable to answer, or to look at him, the trembling Juliet, eagerly
laying both her hands upon the arm of the Baronet, as, cautiously, he
was mounting into the carriage, supplicated that they might be gone.
A petition thus seconded, from so adored a suppliant, was irresistible;
he kissed each fair hand that thus honoured him; and had just accepted
the offer of Harleigh, to aid his arrangements; when the furious
prisoner, struggling with the peace-officers, and loudly swearing,
re-appeared at the inn-door, clamorously demanding his wife.
The tortured Juliet, with an impulse of agony, cast, now, the hands that
were just withdrawn from the Baronet, upon the shoulder of Harleigh, who
was himself fastening the chaise-door, tremulously, and in a tone
scarcely audible, pronouncing, 'Oh! hurry us away, Mr Harleigh!--in
mercy!--in compassion!'
Harleigh, bowing upon the hands which he ventured not to touch, but of
which he felt the impression with a pang indescribable, called to the
postilion to drive off full gallop.
With a low and sad inclination of the head, Juliet, in a faultering
voice, thanked him; involuntarily adding, 'My prayers, Mr Harleigh,--my
every wish for happiness,--will for ever be yours!'
The chaise drove off; but his groan, rather than sigh, reached her
agonized ear; and, in an emotion too violent for concealment, yet to
which she durst allow no vent, she held her almost bursting forehead
with her hand; breathing only by smothered sighs, and scarcely sensible
to the happiness of an uncertain escape, while bowed down by the sight
of the misery that she had inflicted, where all that she owed was
benevolence, sympathy, and generosity.
Not even the delight of thus victoriously carrying off a disputed prize,
could immediately reconcile Sir Jaspar to the fear of even the smallest
disorder in the economy of his medicines, anodynes, sweetmeats, and
various whims; which, from long habits of self-indulgence, he now
conceived to be necessaries, not luxuries.
But when, after having examined, in detail, that his travelling
apparatus was in order, he turned smilingly to the fair mede of his
exertions; and saw the deep absorption of all her faculties in her own
evident affliction, he was struck with surprise and disappointment; and,
after a short and mortified pause, 'Can it be, fair ænigma!' he cried,
'that it is with compunction you abandon this Gallic Goliah?'
Surprised, through this question, from the keen anguish of speechless
suffering; retrospection and anticipation alike gave way to gratitude,
and she poured forth her thanks, her praises, and her wondering delight,
at this unexpected, and marvellous rescue, with so much vivacity of
transport, and so much softness of sensibility for his kindness, that
the enchanted Sir Jaspar, losing all forbearance, in the interest with
which he languished to learn, more positively, her history and her
situation, renewed his entreaties for communication, with an urgency
that she now, for many reasons, no longer thought right to resist:
anxious herself, since concealment was at an end, to clear away the dark
appearances by which she was surrounded; and to remove a mystery that,
for so long a period, had made her owe all good opinion to trust and
generosity.
She pondered, nevertheless, and sighed, ere she could comply. It was
strange to her, she said, and sad, to lift up the veil of secresy to a
new, however interesting and respectable acquaintance; while to her
brother, her sister, and her earliest friend, she still appeared to be
inveloped in impenetrable concealment. Yet, if to communicate the
circumstances which had brought her into this deplorable situation,
could shew her sense of the benevolence of Sir Jaspar, she would set
apart her repugnance, and gather courage to retrace the cruel scenes of
which he had witnessed the direful result. Her inestimable friend had
already related the singular history of all that had preceded their
separation; but, uninformed herself of the dreadful events by which it
had been followed, she could go no further: otherwise, from a noble
openness of heart, which made all disguise painful, if not disgusting to
her, Sir Jaspar would already have been satisfied.
The Baronet, ashamed, would now have withdrawn his petition; but Juliet
no longer wished to retract from her engagement.