Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (53 page)

He put the question rather hurriedly; he seemed half to expect an indignant, or at least a disdainful rejection of the offer: not knowing all my thoughts and feelings, though guessing some, he could not tell in what light the lot would appear to me.  In truth it was humble — but then it was sheltered, and I wanted a safe asylum: it was plodding — but then, compared with that of a governess in a rich house, it was independent; and the fear of servitude with strangers entered my soul like iron: it was not ignoble — not unworthy — not mentally degrading, I made my decision.

“I thank you for the proposal, Mr. Rivers, and I accept it with all my heart.”

“But you comprehend me?” he said.  “It is a village school: your scholars will be only poor girls — cottagers’ children — at the best, farmers’ daughters.  Knitting, sewing, reading, writing, ciphering, will be all you will have to teach.  What will you do with your accomplishments?  What, with the largest portion of your mind — sentiments — tastes?”

“Save them till they are wanted.  They will keep.”

“You know what you undertake, then?”

“I do.”

He now smiled: and not a bitter or a sad smile, but one well pleased and deeply gratified.

“And when will you commence the exercise of your function?”

“I will go to my house to-morrow, and open the school, if you like, next week.”

“Very well: so be it.”

He rose and walked through the room.  Standing still, he again looked at me.  He shook his head.

“What do you disapprove of, Mr. Rivers?” I asked.

“You will not stay at Morton long: no, no!”

“Why?  What is your reason for saying so?”

“I read it in your eye; it is not of that description which promises the maintenance of an even tenor in life.”

“I am not ambitious.”

He started at the word “ambitious.”  He repeated, “No.  What made you think of ambition?  Who is ambitious?  I know I am: but how did you find it out?”

“I was speaking of myself.”

“Well, if you are not ambitious, you are — ”  He paused.

“What?”

“I was going to say, impassioned: but perhaps you would have misunderstood the word, and been displeased.  I mean, that human affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you.  I am sure you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude, and to devote your working hours to a monotonous labour wholly void of stimulus: any more than I can be content,” he added, with emphasis, “to live here buried in morass, pent in with mountains — my nature, that God gave me, contravened; my faculties, heaven-bestowed, paralysed — made useless.  You hear now how I contradict myself.  I, who preached contentment with a humble lot, and justified the vocation even of hewers of wood and drawers of water in God’s service — I, His ordained minister, almost rave in my restlessness.  Well, propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.”

He left the room.  In this brief hour I had learnt more of him than in the whole previous month: yet still he puzzled me.

Diana and Mary Rivers became more sad and silent as the day approached for leaving their brother and their home.  They both tried to appear as usual; but the sorrow they had to struggle against was one that could not be entirely conquered or concealed.  Diana intimated that this would be a different parting from any they had ever yet known.  It would probably, as far as St. John was concerned, be a parting for years: it might be a parting for life.

“He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves,” she said: “natural affection and feelings more potent still.  St. John looks quiet, Jane; but he hides a fever in his vitals.  You would think him gentle, yet in some things he is inexorable as death; and the worst of it is, my conscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him from his severe decision: certainly, I cannot for a moment blame him for it.  It is right, noble, Christian: yet it breaks my heart!”  And the tears gushed to her fine eyes.  Mary bent her head low over her work.

“We are now without father: we shall soon be without home and brother,” she murmured.

At that moment a little accident supervened, which seemed decreed by fate purposely to prove the truth of the adage, that “misfortunes never come singly,” and to add to their distresses the vexing one of the slip between the cup and the lip.  St. John passed the window reading a letter.  He entered.

“Our uncle John is dead,” said he.

Both the sisters seemed struck: not shocked or appalled; the tidings appeared in their eyes rather momentous than afflicting.

“Dead?” repeated Diana.

“Yes.”

She riveted a searching gaze on her brother’s face.  “And what then?” she demanded, in a low voice.

“What then, Die?” he replied, maintaining a marble immobility of feature.  “What then?  Why — nothing.  Read.”

He threw the letter into her lap.  She glanced over it, and handed it to Mary.  Mary perused it in silence, and returned it to her brother.  All three looked at each other, and all three smiled — a dreary, pensive smile enough.

“Amen!  We can yet live,” said Diana at last.

“At any rate, it makes us no worse off than we were before,” remarked Mary.

“Only it forces rather strongly on the mind the picture of what
might have been
,” said Mr. Rivers, “and contrasts it somewhat too vividly with what
is
.”

He folded the letter, locked it in his desk, and again went out.

For some minutes no one spoke.  Diana then turned to me.

“Jane, you will wonder at us and our mysteries,” she said, “and think us hard-hearted beings not to be more moved at the death of so near a relation as an uncle; but we have never seen him or known him.  He was my mother’s brother.  My father and he quarrelled long ago.  It was by his advice that my father risked most of his property in the speculation that ruined him.  Mutual recrimination passed between them: they parted in anger, and were never reconciled.  My uncle engaged afterwards in more prosperous undertakings: it appears he realised a fortune of twenty thousand pounds.  He was never married, and had no near kindred but ourselves and one other person, not more closely related than we.  My father always cherished the idea that he would atone for his error by leaving his possessions to us; that letter informs us that he has bequeathed every penny to the other relation, with the exception of thirty guineas, to be divided between St. John, Diana, and Mary Rivers, for the purchase of three mourning rings.  He had a right, of course, to do as he pleased: and yet a momentary damp is cast on the spirits by the receipt of such news.  Mary and I would have esteemed ourselves rich with a thousand pounds each; and to St. John such a sum would have been valuable, for the good it would have enabled him to do.”

This explanation given, the subject was dropped, and no further reference made to it by either Mr. Rivers or his sisters.  The next day I left Marsh End for Morton.  The day after, Diana and Mary quitted it for distant B-.  In a week, Mr. Rivers and Hannah repaired to the parsonage: and so the old grange was abandoned.

CHAPTER XXXI

My home, then, when I at last find a home, — is a cottage; a little room with whitewashed walls and a sanded floor, containing four painted chairs and a table, a clock, a cupboard, with two or three plates and dishes, and a set of tea-things in delf.  Above, a chamber of the same dimensions as the kitchen, with a deal bedstead and chest of drawers; small, yet too large to be filled with my scanty wardrobe: though the kindness of my gentle and generous friends has increased that, by a modest stock of such things as are necessary.

It is evening.  I have dismissed, with the fee of an orange, the little orphan who serves me as a handmaid.  I am sitting alone on the hearth.  This morning, the village school opened.  I had twenty scholars.  But three of the number can read: none write or cipher.  Several knit, and a few sew a little.  They speak with the broadest accent of the district.  At present, they and I have a difficulty in understanding each other’s language.  Some of them are unmannered, rough, intractable, as well as ignorant; but others are docile, have a wish to learn, and evince a disposition that pleases me.  I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best-born.  My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office.  Much enjoyment I do not expect in the life opening before me: yet it will, doubtless, if I regulate my mind, and exert my powers as I ought, yield me enough to live on from day to day.

Was I very gleeful, settled, content, during the hours I passed in yonder bare, humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon?  Not to deceive myself, I must reply — No: I felt desolate to a degree.  I felt — yes, idiot that I am — I felt degraded.  I doubted I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence.  I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I heard and saw round me.  But let me not hate and despise myself too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong — that is a great step gained; I shall strive to overcome them.  To-morrow, I trust, I shall get the better of them partially; and in a few weeks, perhaps, they will be quite subdued.  In a few months, it is possible, the happiness of seeing progress, and a change for the better in my scholars may substitute gratification for disgust.

Meantime, let me ask myself one question — Which is better? — To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort — no struggle; — but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester’s mistress; delirious with his love half my time — for he would — oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while.  He
did
love me — no one will ever love me so again.  I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace — for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms.  He was fond and proud of me — it is what no man besides will ever be. — But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above all, feeling?  Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool’s paradise at Marseilles — fevered with delusive bliss one hour — suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next — or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?

Yes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment.  God directed me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance!

Having brought my eventide musings to this point, I rose, went to my door, and looked at the sunset of the harvest-day, and at the quiet fields before my cottage, which, with the school, was distant half a mile from the village.  The birds were singing their last strains —

“The air was mild, the dew was balm.”

While I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find myself ere long weeping — and why?  For the doom which had reft me from adhesion to my master: for him I was no more to see; for the desperate grief and fatal fury — consequences of my departure — which might now, perhaps, be dragging him from the path of right, too far to leave hope of ultimate restoration thither.  At this thought, I turned my face aside from the lovely sky of eve and lonely vale of Morton — I say
lonely
, for in that bend of it visible to me there was no building apparent save the church and the parsonage, half-hid in trees, and, quite at the extremity, the roof of Vale Hall, where the rich Mr. Oliver and his daughter lived.  I hid my eyes, and leant my head against the stone frame of my door; but soon a slight noise near the wicket which shut in my tiny garden from the meadow beyond it made me look up.  A dog — old Carlo, Mr. Rivers’ pointer, as I saw in a moment — was pushing the gate with his nose, and St. John himself leant upon it with folded arms; his brow knit, his gaze, grave almost to displeasure, fixed on me.  I asked him to come in.

“No, I cannot stay; I have only brought you a little parcel my sisters left for you.  I think it contains a colour-box, pencils, and paper.”

I approached to take it: a welcome gift it was.  He examined my face, I thought, with austerity, as I came near: the traces of tears were doubtless very visible upon it.

“Have you found your first day’s work harder than you expected?” he asked.

“Oh, no!  On the contrary, I think in time I shall get on with my scholars very well.”

“But perhaps your accommodations — your cottage — your furniture — have disappointed your expectations?  They are, in truth, scanty enough; but — ” I interrupted —

“My cottage is clean and weather-proof; my furniture sufficient and commodious.  All I see has made me thankful, not despondent.  I am not absolutely such a fool and sensualist as to regret the absence of a carpet, a sofa, and silver plate; besides, five weeks ago I had nothing — I was an outcast, a beggar, a vagrant; now I have acquaintance, a home, a business.  I wonder at the goodness of God; the generosity of my friends; the bounty of my lot.  I do not repine.”

“But you feel solitude an oppression?  The little house there behind you is dark and empty.”

“I have hardly had time yet to enjoy a sense of tranquillity, much less to grow impatient under one of loneliness.”

“Very well; I hope you feel the content you express: at any rate, your good sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to the vacillating fears of Lot’s wife.  What you had left before I saw you, of course I do not know; but I counsel you to resist firmly every temptation which would incline you to look back: pursue your present career steadily, for some months at least.”

“It is what I mean to do,” I answered.  St. John continued —

“It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience.  God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate; and when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get — when our will strains after a path we may not follow — we need neither starve from inanition, nor stand still in despair: we have but to seek another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden food it longed to taste — and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if rougher than it.

“A year ago I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I had made a mistake in entering the ministry: its uniform duties wearied me to death.  I burnt for the more active life of the world — for the more exciting toils of a literary career — for the destiny of an artist, author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest: yes, the heart of a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover of renown, a luster after power, beat under my curate’s surplice.  I considered; my life was so wretched, it must be changed, or I must die.  After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell: my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds — my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken.  God had an errand for me; to bear which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator, were all needed: for these all centre in the good missionary.

“A missionary I resolved to be.  From that moment my state of mind changed; the fetters dissolved and dropped from every faculty, leaving nothing of bondage but its galling soreness — which time only can heal.  My father, indeed, imposed the determination, but since his death, I have not a legitimate obstacle to contend with; some affairs settled, a successor for Morton provided, an entanglement or two of the feelings broken through or cut asunder — a last conflict with human weakness, in which I know I shall overcome, because I have vowed that I
will
overcome — and I leave Europe for the East.”

He said this, in his peculiar, subdued, yet emphatic voice; looking, when he had ceased speaking, not at me, but at the setting sun, at which I looked too.  Both he and I had our backs towards the path leading up the field to the wicket.  We had heard no step on that grass-grown track; the water running in the vale was the one lulling sound of the hour and scene; we might well then start when a gay voice, sweet as a silver bell, exclaimed —

“Good evening, Mr. Rivers.  And good evening, old Carlo.  Your dog is quicker to recognise his friends than you are, sir; he pricked his ears and wagged his tail when I was at the bottom of the field, and you have your back towards me now.”

It was true.  Though Mr. Rivers had started at the first of those musical accents, as if a thunderbolt had split a cloud over his head, he stood yet, at the close of the sentence, in the same attitude in which the speaker had surprised him — his arm resting on the gate, his face directed towards the west.  He turned at last, with measured deliberation.  A vision, as it seemed to me, had risen at his side.  There appeared, within three feet of him, a form clad in pure white — a youthful, graceful form: full, yet fine in contour; and when, after bending to caress Carlo, it lifted up its head, and threw back a long veil, there bloomed under his glance a face of perfect beauty.  Perfect beauty is a strong expression; but I do not retrace or qualify it: as sweet features as ever the temperate clime of Albion moulded; as pure hues of rose and lily as ever her humid gales and vapoury skies generated and screened, justified, in this instance, the term.  No charm was wanting, no defect was perceptible; the young girl had regular and delicate lineaments; eyes shaped and coloured as we see them in lovely pictures, large, and dark, and full; the long and shadowy eyelash which encircles a fine eye with so soft a fascination; the pencilled brow which gives such clearness; the white smooth forehead, which adds such repose to the livelier beauties of tint and ray; the cheek oval, fresh, and smooth; the lips, fresh too, ruddy, healthy, sweetly formed; the even and gleaming teeth without flaw; the small dimpled chin; the ornament of rich, plenteous tresses — all advantages, in short, which, combined, realise the ideal of beauty, were fully hers.  I wondered, as I looked at this fair creature: I admired her with my whole heart.  Nature had surely formed her in a partial mood; and, forgetting her usual stinted step-mother dole of gifts, had endowed this, her darling, with a grand-dame’s bounty.

What did St. John Rivers think of this earthly angel?  I naturally asked myself that question as I saw him turn to her and look at her; and, as naturally, I sought the answer to the inquiry in his countenance.  He had already withdrawn his eye from the Peri, and was looking at a humble tuft of daisies which grew by the wicket.

“A lovely evening, but late for you to be out alone,” he said, as he crushed the snowy heads of the closed flowers with his foot.

“Oh, I only came home from S-” (she mentioned the name of a large town some twenty miles distant) “this afternoon.  Papa told me you had opened your school, and that the new mistress was come; and so I put on my bonnet after tea, and ran up the valley to see her: this is she?” pointing to me.

“It is,” said St. John.

“Do you think you shall like Morton?” she asked of me, with a direct and naive simplicity of tone and manner, pleasing, if child-like.

“I hope I shall.  I have many inducements to do so.”

“Did you find your scholars as attentive as you expected?”

“Quite.”

“Do you like your house?”

“Very much.”

“Have I furnished it nicely?”