In this brief hour I had learnt more of him than in
the whole previous month: yet still he puzzled me.
the whole previous month: yet still he puzzled me.
Jane Eyre- An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë
This benefit conferred gives
you an unlimited claim on my gratitude, and a claim, to a certain extent,
on my confidence. I will tell you as much of the history of the wanderer
you have harboured, as I can tell without compromising my own peace of
mind--my own security, moral and physical, and that of others.
"I am an orphan, the daughter of a clergyman. My parents died before I
could know them. I was brought up a dependant; educated in a charitable
institution. I will even tell you the name of the establishment, where I
passed six years as a pupil, and two as a teacher--Lowood Orphan Asylum,
---shire: you will have heard of it, Mr. Rivers? --the Rev. Robert
Brocklehurst is the treasurer. "
"I have heard of Mr. Brocklehurst, and I have seen the school. "
"I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess. I
obtained a good situation, and was happy. This place I was obliged to
leave four days before I came here. The reason of my departure I cannot
and ought not to explain: it would be useless, dangerous, and would sound
incredible. No blame attached to me: I am as free from culpability as
any one of you three. Miserable I am, and must be for a time; for the
catastrophe which drove me from a house I had found a paradise was of a
strange and direful nature. I observed but two points in planning my
departure--speed, secrecy: to secure these, I had to leave behind me
everything I possessed except a small parcel; which, in my hurry and
trouble of mind, I forgot to take out of the coach that brought me to
Whitcross. To this neighbourhood, then, I came, quite destitute. I
slept two nights in the open air, and wandered about two days without
crossing a threshold: but twice in that space of time did I taste food;
and it was when brought by hunger, exhaustion, and despair almost to the
last gasp, that you, Mr. Rivers, forbade me to perish of want at your
door, and took me under the shelter of your roof. I know all your
sisters have done for me since--for I have not been insensible during my
seeming torpor--and I owe to their spontaneous, genuine, genial
compassion as large a debt as to your evangelical charity. "
"Don't make her talk any more now, St. John," said Diana, as I paused;
"she is evidently not yet fit for excitement. Come to the sofa and sit
down now, Miss Elliott. "
I gave an involuntary half start at hearing the _alias_: I had forgotten
my new name. Mr. Rivers, whom nothing seemed to escape, noticed it at
once.
"You said your name was Jane Elliott? " he observed.
"I did say so; and it is the name by which I think it expedient to be
called at present, but it is not my real name, and when I hear it, it
sounds strange to me. "
"Your real name you will not give? "
"No: I fear discovery above all things; and whatever disclosure would
lead to it, I avoid. "
"You are quite right, I am sure," said Diana. "Now do, brother, let her
be at peace a while. "
But when St. John had mused a few moments he recommenced as imperturbably
and with as much acumen as ever.
"You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality--you would
wish, I see, to dispense as soon as may be with my sisters' compassion,
and, above all, with my _charity_ (I am quite sensible of the distinction
drawn, nor do I resent it--it is just): you desire to be independent of
us? "
"I do: I have already said so. Show me how to work, or how to seek work:
that is all I now ask; then let me go, if it be but to the meanest
cottage; but till then, allow me to stay here: I dread another essay of
the horrors of homeless destitution. "
"Indeed you _shall_ stay here," said Diana, putting her white hand on my
head. "You _shall_," repeated Mary, in the tone of undemonstrative
sincerity which seemed natural to her.
"My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you," said Mr. St. John,
"as they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing a half-frozen
bird, some wintry wind might have driven through their casement. I feel
more inclination to put you in the way of keeping yourself, and shall
endeavour to do so; but observe, my sphere is narrow. I am but the
incumbent of a poor country parish: my aid must be of the humblest sort.
And if you are inclined to despise the day of small things, seek some
more efficient succour than such as I can offer. "
"She has already said that she is willing to do anything honest she can
do," answered Diana for me; "and you know, St. John, she has no choice of
helpers: she is forced to put up with such crusty people as you. "
"I will be a dressmaker; I will be a plain-workwoman; I will be a
servant, a nurse-girl, if I can be no better," I answered.
"Right," said Mr. St. John, quite coolly. "If such is your spirit, I
promise to aid you, in my own time and way. "
He now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea. I
soon withdrew, for I had talked as much, and sat up as long, as my
present strength would permit.
CHAPTER XXX
The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them. In
a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could sit up all day,
and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and Mary in all their
occupations; converse with them as much as they wished, and aid them when
and where they would allow me. There was a reviving pleasure in this
intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time--the pleasure
arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles.
I liked to read what they liked to read: what they enjoyed, delighted me;
what they approved, I reverenced. They loved their sequestered home. I,
too, in the grey, small, antique structure, with its low roof, its
latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its avenue of aged firs--all
grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds; its garden, dark with
yew and holly--and where no flowers but of the hardiest species would
bloom--found a charm both potent and permanent. They clung to the purple
moors behind and around their dwelling--to the hollow vale into which the
pebbly bridle-path leading from their gate descended, and which wound
between fern-banks first, and then amongst a few of the wildest little
pasture-fields that ever bordered a wilderness of heath, or gave
sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep, with their little mossy-
faced lambs:--they clung to this scene, I say, with a perfect enthusiasm
of attachment. I could comprehend the feeling, and share both its
strength and truth. I saw the fascination of the locality. I felt the
consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted on the outline of swell
and sweep--on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell by moss,
by heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken, and mellow
granite crag. These details were just to me what they were to them--so
many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast and the soft
breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and sunset;
the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for me, in these regions,
the same attraction as for them--wound round my faculties the same spell
that entranced theirs.
Indoors we agreed equally well. They were both more accomplished and
better read than I was; but with eagerness I followed in the path of
knowledge they had trodden before me. I devoured the books they lent me:
then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them in the evening what I
had perused during the day. Thought fitted thought; opinion met opinion:
we coincided, in short, perfectly.
If in our trio there was a superior and a leader, it was Diana.
Physically, she far excelled me: she was handsome; she was vigorous. In
her animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainty of flow,
such as excited my wonder, while it baffled my comprehension. I could
talk a while when the evening commenced, but the first gush of vivacity
and fluency gone, I was fain to sit on a stool at Diana's feet, to rest
my head on her knee, and listen alternately to her and Mary, while they
sounded thoroughly the topic on which I had but touched. Diana offered
to teach me German. I liked to learn of her: I saw the part of
instructress pleased and suited her; that of scholar pleased and suited
me no less. Our natures dovetailed: mutual affection--of the strongest
kind--was the result. They discovered I could draw: their pencils and
colour-boxes were immediately at my service. My skill, greater in this
one point than theirs, surprised and charmed them. Mary would sit and
watch me by the hour together: then she would take lessons; and a docile,
intelligent, assiduous pupil she made. Thus occupied, and mutually
entertained, days passed like hours, and weeks like days.
As to Mr. St John, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally and rapidly
between me and his sisters did not extend to him. One reason of the
distance yet observed between us was, that he was comparatively seldom at
home: a large proportion of his time appeared devoted to visiting the
sick and poor among the scattered population of his parish.
No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions: rain or
fair, he would, when his hours of morning study were over, take his hat,
and, followed by his father's old pointer, Carlo, go out on his mission
of love or duty--I scarcely know in which light he regarded it.
Sometimes, when the day was very unfavourable, his sisters would
expostulate. He would then say, with a peculiar smile, more solemn than
cheerful--
"And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from
these easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the future I
propose to myself? "
Diana and Mary's general answer to this question was a sigh, and some
minutes of apparently mournful meditation.
But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to
friendship with him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even of
a brooding nature. Zealous in his ministerial labours, blameless in his
life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy that mental serenity,
that inward content, which should be the reward of every sincere
Christian and practical philanthropist. Often, of an evening, when he
sat at the window, his desk and papers before him, he would cease reading
or writing, rest his chin on his hand, and deliver himself up to I know
not what course of thought; but that it was perturbed and exciting might
be seen in the frequent flash and changeful dilation of his eye.
I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of delight it
was to his sisters. He expressed once, and but once in my hearing, a
strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an inborn affection
for the dark roof and hoary walls he called his home; but there was more
of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in which the sentiment was
manifested; and never did he seem to roam the moors for the sake of their
soothing silence--never seek out or dwell upon the thousand peaceful
delights they could yield.
Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an opportunity
of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its calibre when I heard him
preach in his own church at Morton. I wish I could describe that sermon:
but it is past my power. I cannot even render faithfully the effect it
produced on me.
It began calm--and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice went, it
was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal
breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted the nervous language.
This grew to force--compressed, condensed, controlled. The heart was
thrilled, the mind astonished, by the power of the preacher: neither were
softened. Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an absence of
consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic
doctrines--election, predestination, reprobation--were frequent; and each
reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom.
When he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by
his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed to
me--I know not whether equally so to others--that the eloquence to which
I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of
disappointment--where moved troubling impulses of insatiate yearnings and
disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John Rivers--pure-lived,
conscientious, zealous as he was--had not yet found that peace of God
which passeth all understanding: he had no more found it, I thought, than
had I with my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost
elysium--regrets to which I have latterly avoided referring, but which
possessed me and tyrannised over me ruthlessly.
Meantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor House,
and return to the far different life and scene which awaited them, as
governesses in a large, fashionable, south-of-England city, where each
held a situation in families by whose wealthy and haughty members they
were regarded only as humble dependants, and who neither knew nor sought
out their innate excellences, and appreciated only their acquired
accomplishments as they appreciated the skill of their cook or the taste
of their waiting-woman. Mr. St. John had said nothing to me yet about
the employment he had promised to obtain for me; yet it became urgent
that I should have a vocation of some kind. One morning, being left
alone with him a few minutes in the parlour, I ventured to approach the
window-recess--which his table, chair, and desk consecrated as a kind of
study--and I was going to speak, though not very well knowing in what
words to frame my inquiry--for it is at all times difficult to break the
ice of reserve glassing over such natures as his--when he saved me the
trouble by being the first to commence a dialogue.
Looking up as I drew near--"You have a question to ask of me? " he said.
"Yes; I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can offer
myself to undertake? "
"I found or devised something for you three weeks ago; but as you seemed
both useful and happy here--as my sisters had evidently become attached
to you, and your society gave them unusual pleasure--I deemed it
inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort till their approaching
departure from Marsh End should render yours necessary. "
"And they will go in three days now? " I said.
"Yes; and when they go, I shall return to the parsonage at Morton: Hannah
will accompany me; and this old house will be shut up. "
I waited a few moments, expecting he would go on with the subject first
broached: but he seemed to have entered another train of reflection: his
look denoted abstraction from me and my business. I was obliged to
recall him to a theme which was of necessity one of close and anxious
interest to me.
"What is the employment you had in view, Mr. Rivers? I hope this delay
will not have increased the difficulty of securing it. "
"Oh, no; since it is an employment which depends only on me to give, and
you to accept. "
He again paused: there seemed a reluctance to continue. I grew
impatient: a restless movement or two, and an eager and exacting glance
fastened on his face, conveyed the feeling to him as effectually as words
could have done, and with less trouble.
"You need be in no hurry to hear," he said: "let me frankly tell you, I
have nothing eligible or profitable to suggest. Before I explain,
recall, if you please, my notice, clearly given, that if I helped you, it
must be as the blind man would help the lame. I am poor; for I find
that, when I have paid my father's debts, all the patrimony remaining to
me will be this crumbling grange, the row of scathed firs behind, and the
patch of moorish soil, with the yew-trees and holly-bushes in front. I
am obscure: Rivers is an old name; but of the three sole descendants of
the race, two earn the dependant's crust among strangers, and the third
considers himself an alien from his native country--not only for life,
but in death. Yes, and deems, and is bound to deem, himself honoured by
the lot, and aspires but after the day when the cross of separation from
fleshly ties shall be laid on his shoulders, and when the Head of that
church-militant of whose humblest members he is one, shall give the word,
'Rise, follow Me! '"
St. John said these words as he pronounced his sermons, with a quiet,
deep voice; with an unflushed cheek, and a coruscating radiance of
glance. He resumed--
"And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a service of
poverty and obscurity. _You_ may even think it degrading--for I see now
your habits have been what the world calls refined: your tastes lean to
the ideal, and your society has at least been amongst the educated; but
_I_ consider that no service degrades which can better our race. I hold
that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the Christian
labourer's task of tillage is appointed him--the scantier the meed his
toil brings--the higher the honour. His, under such circumstances, is
the destiny of the pioneer; and the first pioneers of the Gospel were the
Apostles--their captain was Jesus, the Redeemer, Himself. "
"Well? " I said, as he again paused--"proceed. "
He looked at me before he proceeded: indeed, he seemed leisurely to read
my face, as if its features and lines were characters on a page. The
conclusions drawn from this scrutiny he partially expressed in his
succeeding observations.
"I believe you will accept the post I offer you," said he, "and hold it
for a while: not permanently, though: any more than I could permanently
keep the narrow and narrowing--the tranquil, hidden office of English
country incumbent; for in your nature is an alloy as detrimental to
repose as that in mine, though of a different kind. "
"Do explain," I urged, when he halted once more.
"I will; and you shall hear how poor the proposal is,--how trivial--how
cramping. I shall not stay long at Morton, now that my father is dead,
and that I am my own master. I shall leave the place probably in the
course of a twelve-month; but while I do stay, I will exert myself to the
utmost for its improvement. Morton, when I came to it two years ago, had
no school: the children of the poor were excluded from every hope of
progress. I established one for boys: I mean now to open a second school
for girls. I have hired a building for the purpose, with a cottage of
two rooms attached to it for the mistress's house. Her salary will be
thirty pounds a year: her house is already furnished, very simply, but
sufficiently, by the kindness of a lady, Miss Oliver; the only daughter
of the sole rich man in my parish--Mr. Oliver, the proprietor of a needle-
factory and iron-foundry in the valley. The same lady pays for the
education and clothing of an orphan from the workhouse, on condition that
she shall aid the mistress in such menial offices connected with her own
house and the school as her occupation of teaching will prevent her
having time to discharge in person. Will you be this mistress? "
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? "
"Very nicely, indeed. "
"And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Alice Wood? "
"You have indeed. She is teachable and handy. " (This then, I thought,
is Miss Oliver, the heiress; favoured, it seems, in the gifts of fortune,
as well as in those of nature! What happy combination of the planets
presided over her birth, I wonder? )
"I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes," she added. "It will
be a change for me to visit you now and then; and I like a change. Mr.
Rivers, I have been _so_ gay during my stay at S-. Last night, or rather
this morning, I was dancing till two o'clock. The ---th regiment are
stationed there since the riots; and the officers are the most agreeable
men in the world: they put all our young knife-grinders and scissor
merchants to shame. "
It seemed to me that Mr. St. John's under lip protruded, and his upper
lip curled a moment. His mouth certainly looked a good deal compressed,
and the lower part of his face unusually stern and square, as the
laughing girl gave him this information. He lifted his gaze, too, from
the daisies, and turned it on her. An unsmiling, a searching, a meaning
gaze it was. She answered it with a second laugh, and laughter well
became her youth, her roses, her dimples, her bright eyes.
As he stood, mute and grave, she again fell to caressing Carlo. "Poor
Carlo loves me," said she. "_He_ is not stern and distant to his
friends; and if he could speak, he would not be silent. "
As she patted the dog's head, bending with native grace before his young
and austere master, I saw a glow rise to that master's face. I saw his
solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with resistless emotion.
Flushed and kindled thus, he looked nearly as beautiful for a man as she
for a woman. His chest heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of
despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and made a
vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty. But he curbed it, I think,
as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed. He responded neither by
word nor movement to the gentle advances made him.
"Papa says you never come to see us now," continued Miss Oliver, looking
up. "You are quite a stranger at Vale Hall.
you an unlimited claim on my gratitude, and a claim, to a certain extent,
on my confidence. I will tell you as much of the history of the wanderer
you have harboured, as I can tell without compromising my own peace of
mind--my own security, moral and physical, and that of others.
"I am an orphan, the daughter of a clergyman. My parents died before I
could know them. I was brought up a dependant; educated in a charitable
institution. I will even tell you the name of the establishment, where I
passed six years as a pupil, and two as a teacher--Lowood Orphan Asylum,
---shire: you will have heard of it, Mr. Rivers? --the Rev. Robert
Brocklehurst is the treasurer. "
"I have heard of Mr. Brocklehurst, and I have seen the school. "
"I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess. I
obtained a good situation, and was happy. This place I was obliged to
leave four days before I came here. The reason of my departure I cannot
and ought not to explain: it would be useless, dangerous, and would sound
incredible. No blame attached to me: I am as free from culpability as
any one of you three. Miserable I am, and must be for a time; for the
catastrophe which drove me from a house I had found a paradise was of a
strange and direful nature. I observed but two points in planning my
departure--speed, secrecy: to secure these, I had to leave behind me
everything I possessed except a small parcel; which, in my hurry and
trouble of mind, I forgot to take out of the coach that brought me to
Whitcross. To this neighbourhood, then, I came, quite destitute. I
slept two nights in the open air, and wandered about two days without
crossing a threshold: but twice in that space of time did I taste food;
and it was when brought by hunger, exhaustion, and despair almost to the
last gasp, that you, Mr. Rivers, forbade me to perish of want at your
door, and took me under the shelter of your roof. I know all your
sisters have done for me since--for I have not been insensible during my
seeming torpor--and I owe to their spontaneous, genuine, genial
compassion as large a debt as to your evangelical charity. "
"Don't make her talk any more now, St. John," said Diana, as I paused;
"she is evidently not yet fit for excitement. Come to the sofa and sit
down now, Miss Elliott. "
I gave an involuntary half start at hearing the _alias_: I had forgotten
my new name. Mr. Rivers, whom nothing seemed to escape, noticed it at
once.
"You said your name was Jane Elliott? " he observed.
"I did say so; and it is the name by which I think it expedient to be
called at present, but it is not my real name, and when I hear it, it
sounds strange to me. "
"Your real name you will not give? "
"No: I fear discovery above all things; and whatever disclosure would
lead to it, I avoid. "
"You are quite right, I am sure," said Diana. "Now do, brother, let her
be at peace a while. "
But when St. John had mused a few moments he recommenced as imperturbably
and with as much acumen as ever.
"You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality--you would
wish, I see, to dispense as soon as may be with my sisters' compassion,
and, above all, with my _charity_ (I am quite sensible of the distinction
drawn, nor do I resent it--it is just): you desire to be independent of
us? "
"I do: I have already said so. Show me how to work, or how to seek work:
that is all I now ask; then let me go, if it be but to the meanest
cottage; but till then, allow me to stay here: I dread another essay of
the horrors of homeless destitution. "
"Indeed you _shall_ stay here," said Diana, putting her white hand on my
head. "You _shall_," repeated Mary, in the tone of undemonstrative
sincerity which seemed natural to her.
"My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you," said Mr. St. John,
"as they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing a half-frozen
bird, some wintry wind might have driven through their casement. I feel
more inclination to put you in the way of keeping yourself, and shall
endeavour to do so; but observe, my sphere is narrow. I am but the
incumbent of a poor country parish: my aid must be of the humblest sort.
And if you are inclined to despise the day of small things, seek some
more efficient succour than such as I can offer. "
"She has already said that she is willing to do anything honest she can
do," answered Diana for me; "and you know, St. John, she has no choice of
helpers: she is forced to put up with such crusty people as you. "
"I will be a dressmaker; I will be a plain-workwoman; I will be a
servant, a nurse-girl, if I can be no better," I answered.
"Right," said Mr. St. John, quite coolly. "If such is your spirit, I
promise to aid you, in my own time and way. "
He now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea. I
soon withdrew, for I had talked as much, and sat up as long, as my
present strength would permit.
CHAPTER XXX
The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them. In
a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could sit up all day,
and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and Mary in all their
occupations; converse with them as much as they wished, and aid them when
and where they would allow me. There was a reviving pleasure in this
intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time--the pleasure
arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles.
I liked to read what they liked to read: what they enjoyed, delighted me;
what they approved, I reverenced. They loved their sequestered home. I,
too, in the grey, small, antique structure, with its low roof, its
latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its avenue of aged firs--all
grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds; its garden, dark with
yew and holly--and where no flowers but of the hardiest species would
bloom--found a charm both potent and permanent. They clung to the purple
moors behind and around their dwelling--to the hollow vale into which the
pebbly bridle-path leading from their gate descended, and which wound
between fern-banks first, and then amongst a few of the wildest little
pasture-fields that ever bordered a wilderness of heath, or gave
sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep, with their little mossy-
faced lambs:--they clung to this scene, I say, with a perfect enthusiasm
of attachment. I could comprehend the feeling, and share both its
strength and truth. I saw the fascination of the locality. I felt the
consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted on the outline of swell
and sweep--on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell by moss,
by heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken, and mellow
granite crag. These details were just to me what they were to them--so
many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast and the soft
breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and sunset;
the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for me, in these regions,
the same attraction as for them--wound round my faculties the same spell
that entranced theirs.
Indoors we agreed equally well. They were both more accomplished and
better read than I was; but with eagerness I followed in the path of
knowledge they had trodden before me. I devoured the books they lent me:
then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them in the evening what I
had perused during the day. Thought fitted thought; opinion met opinion:
we coincided, in short, perfectly.
If in our trio there was a superior and a leader, it was Diana.
Physically, she far excelled me: she was handsome; she was vigorous. In
her animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainty of flow,
such as excited my wonder, while it baffled my comprehension. I could
talk a while when the evening commenced, but the first gush of vivacity
and fluency gone, I was fain to sit on a stool at Diana's feet, to rest
my head on her knee, and listen alternately to her and Mary, while they
sounded thoroughly the topic on which I had but touched. Diana offered
to teach me German. I liked to learn of her: I saw the part of
instructress pleased and suited her; that of scholar pleased and suited
me no less. Our natures dovetailed: mutual affection--of the strongest
kind--was the result. They discovered I could draw: their pencils and
colour-boxes were immediately at my service. My skill, greater in this
one point than theirs, surprised and charmed them. Mary would sit and
watch me by the hour together: then she would take lessons; and a docile,
intelligent, assiduous pupil she made. Thus occupied, and mutually
entertained, days passed like hours, and weeks like days.
As to Mr. St John, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally and rapidly
between me and his sisters did not extend to him. One reason of the
distance yet observed between us was, that he was comparatively seldom at
home: a large proportion of his time appeared devoted to visiting the
sick and poor among the scattered population of his parish.
No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions: rain or
fair, he would, when his hours of morning study were over, take his hat,
and, followed by his father's old pointer, Carlo, go out on his mission
of love or duty--I scarcely know in which light he regarded it.
Sometimes, when the day was very unfavourable, his sisters would
expostulate. He would then say, with a peculiar smile, more solemn than
cheerful--
"And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from
these easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the future I
propose to myself? "
Diana and Mary's general answer to this question was a sigh, and some
minutes of apparently mournful meditation.
But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to
friendship with him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even of
a brooding nature. Zealous in his ministerial labours, blameless in his
life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy that mental serenity,
that inward content, which should be the reward of every sincere
Christian and practical philanthropist. Often, of an evening, when he
sat at the window, his desk and papers before him, he would cease reading
or writing, rest his chin on his hand, and deliver himself up to I know
not what course of thought; but that it was perturbed and exciting might
be seen in the frequent flash and changeful dilation of his eye.
I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of delight it
was to his sisters. He expressed once, and but once in my hearing, a
strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an inborn affection
for the dark roof and hoary walls he called his home; but there was more
of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in which the sentiment was
manifested; and never did he seem to roam the moors for the sake of their
soothing silence--never seek out or dwell upon the thousand peaceful
delights they could yield.
Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an opportunity
of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its calibre when I heard him
preach in his own church at Morton. I wish I could describe that sermon:
but it is past my power. I cannot even render faithfully the effect it
produced on me.
It began calm--and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice went, it
was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal
breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted the nervous language.
This grew to force--compressed, condensed, controlled. The heart was
thrilled, the mind astonished, by the power of the preacher: neither were
softened. Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an absence of
consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic
doctrines--election, predestination, reprobation--were frequent; and each
reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom.
When he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by
his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed to
me--I know not whether equally so to others--that the eloquence to which
I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of
disappointment--where moved troubling impulses of insatiate yearnings and
disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John Rivers--pure-lived,
conscientious, zealous as he was--had not yet found that peace of God
which passeth all understanding: he had no more found it, I thought, than
had I with my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost
elysium--regrets to which I have latterly avoided referring, but which
possessed me and tyrannised over me ruthlessly.
Meantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor House,
and return to the far different life and scene which awaited them, as
governesses in a large, fashionable, south-of-England city, where each
held a situation in families by whose wealthy and haughty members they
were regarded only as humble dependants, and who neither knew nor sought
out their innate excellences, and appreciated only their acquired
accomplishments as they appreciated the skill of their cook or the taste
of their waiting-woman. Mr. St. John had said nothing to me yet about
the employment he had promised to obtain for me; yet it became urgent
that I should have a vocation of some kind. One morning, being left
alone with him a few minutes in the parlour, I ventured to approach the
window-recess--which his table, chair, and desk consecrated as a kind of
study--and I was going to speak, though not very well knowing in what
words to frame my inquiry--for it is at all times difficult to break the
ice of reserve glassing over such natures as his--when he saved me the
trouble by being the first to commence a dialogue.
Looking up as I drew near--"You have a question to ask of me? " he said.
"Yes; I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can offer
myself to undertake? "
"I found or devised something for you three weeks ago; but as you seemed
both useful and happy here--as my sisters had evidently become attached
to you, and your society gave them unusual pleasure--I deemed it
inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort till their approaching
departure from Marsh End should render yours necessary. "
"And they will go in three days now? " I said.
"Yes; and when they go, I shall return to the parsonage at Morton: Hannah
will accompany me; and this old house will be shut up. "
I waited a few moments, expecting he would go on with the subject first
broached: but he seemed to have entered another train of reflection: his
look denoted abstraction from me and my business. I was obliged to
recall him to a theme which was of necessity one of close and anxious
interest to me.
"What is the employment you had in view, Mr. Rivers? I hope this delay
will not have increased the difficulty of securing it. "
"Oh, no; since it is an employment which depends only on me to give, and
you to accept. "
He again paused: there seemed a reluctance to continue. I grew
impatient: a restless movement or two, and an eager and exacting glance
fastened on his face, conveyed the feeling to him as effectually as words
could have done, and with less trouble.
"You need be in no hurry to hear," he said: "let me frankly tell you, I
have nothing eligible or profitable to suggest. Before I explain,
recall, if you please, my notice, clearly given, that if I helped you, it
must be as the blind man would help the lame. I am poor; for I find
that, when I have paid my father's debts, all the patrimony remaining to
me will be this crumbling grange, the row of scathed firs behind, and the
patch of moorish soil, with the yew-trees and holly-bushes in front. I
am obscure: Rivers is an old name; but of the three sole descendants of
the race, two earn the dependant's crust among strangers, and the third
considers himself an alien from his native country--not only for life,
but in death. Yes, and deems, and is bound to deem, himself honoured by
the lot, and aspires but after the day when the cross of separation from
fleshly ties shall be laid on his shoulders, and when the Head of that
church-militant of whose humblest members he is one, shall give the word,
'Rise, follow Me! '"
St. John said these words as he pronounced his sermons, with a quiet,
deep voice; with an unflushed cheek, and a coruscating radiance of
glance. He resumed--
"And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a service of
poverty and obscurity. _You_ may even think it degrading--for I see now
your habits have been what the world calls refined: your tastes lean to
the ideal, and your society has at least been amongst the educated; but
_I_ consider that no service degrades which can better our race. I hold
that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the Christian
labourer's task of tillage is appointed him--the scantier the meed his
toil brings--the higher the honour. His, under such circumstances, is
the destiny of the pioneer; and the first pioneers of the Gospel were the
Apostles--their captain was Jesus, the Redeemer, Himself. "
"Well? " I said, as he again paused--"proceed. "
He looked at me before he proceeded: indeed, he seemed leisurely to read
my face, as if its features and lines were characters on a page. The
conclusions drawn from this scrutiny he partially expressed in his
succeeding observations.
"I believe you will accept the post I offer you," said he, "and hold it
for a while: not permanently, though: any more than I could permanently
keep the narrow and narrowing--the tranquil, hidden office of English
country incumbent; for in your nature is an alloy as detrimental to
repose as that in mine, though of a different kind. "
"Do explain," I urged, when he halted once more.
"I will; and you shall hear how poor the proposal is,--how trivial--how
cramping. I shall not stay long at Morton, now that my father is dead,
and that I am my own master. I shall leave the place probably in the
course of a twelve-month; but while I do stay, I will exert myself to the
utmost for its improvement. Morton, when I came to it two years ago, had
no school: the children of the poor were excluded from every hope of
progress. I established one for boys: I mean now to open a second school
for girls. I have hired a building for the purpose, with a cottage of
two rooms attached to it for the mistress's house. Her salary will be
thirty pounds a year: her house is already furnished, very simply, but
sufficiently, by the kindness of a lady, Miss Oliver; the only daughter
of the sole rich man in my parish--Mr. Oliver, the proprietor of a needle-
factory and iron-foundry in the valley. The same lady pays for the
education and clothing of an orphan from the workhouse, on condition that
she shall aid the mistress in such menial offices connected with her own
house and the school as her occupation of teaching will prevent her
having time to discharge in person. Will you be this mistress? "
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? "
"Very nicely, indeed. "
"And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Alice Wood? "
"You have indeed. She is teachable and handy. " (This then, I thought,
is Miss Oliver, the heiress; favoured, it seems, in the gifts of fortune,
as well as in those of nature! What happy combination of the planets
presided over her birth, I wonder? )
"I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes," she added. "It will
be a change for me to visit you now and then; and I like a change. Mr.
Rivers, I have been _so_ gay during my stay at S-. Last night, or rather
this morning, I was dancing till two o'clock. The ---th regiment are
stationed there since the riots; and the officers are the most agreeable
men in the world: they put all our young knife-grinders and scissor
merchants to shame. "
It seemed to me that Mr. St. John's under lip protruded, and his upper
lip curled a moment. His mouth certainly looked a good deal compressed,
and the lower part of his face unusually stern and square, as the
laughing girl gave him this information. He lifted his gaze, too, from
the daisies, and turned it on her. An unsmiling, a searching, a meaning
gaze it was. She answered it with a second laugh, and laughter well
became her youth, her roses, her dimples, her bright eyes.
As he stood, mute and grave, she again fell to caressing Carlo. "Poor
Carlo loves me," said she. "_He_ is not stern and distant to his
friends; and if he could speak, he would not be silent. "
As she patted the dog's head, bending with native grace before his young
and austere master, I saw a glow rise to that master's face. I saw his
solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with resistless emotion.
Flushed and kindled thus, he looked nearly as beautiful for a man as she
for a woman. His chest heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of
despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and made a
vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty. But he curbed it, I think,
as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed. He responded neither by
word nor movement to the gentle advances made him.
"Papa says you never come to see us now," continued Miss Oliver, looking
up. "You are quite a stranger at Vale Hall.
