Bab Bab 31 · My home, then, when I at last find a home,—is a cottage; a little room

. 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 naïve 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. He is alone this

evening, and not very well: will you return with me and visit him?”

“It is not a seasonable hour to intrude on Mr. Oliver,” answered St.

John.

“Not a seasonable hour! But I declare it is. It is just the hour when

papa most wants company: when the works are closed and he has no

business to occupy him. Now, Mr. Rivers, _do_ come. Why are you so very

shy, and so very sombre?” She filled up the hiatus his silence left by

a reply of her own.

“I forgot!” she exclaimed, shaking her beautiful curled head, as if

shocked at herself. “I am so giddy and thoughtless! _Do_ excuse me. It

had slipped my memory that you have good reasons to be indisposed for

joining in my chatter. Diana and Mary have left you, and Moor House is

shut up, and you are so lonely. I am sure I pity you. Do come and see

papa.”

“Not to-night, Miss Rosamond, not to-night.”

Mr. St. John spoke almost like an automaton: himself only knew the

effort it cost him thus to refuse.

“Well, if you are so obstinate, I will leave you; for I dare not stay

any longer: the dew begins to fall. Good evening!”

She held out her hand. He just touched it. “Good evening!” he repeated,

in a voice low and hollow as an echo. She turned, but in a moment

returned.

“Are you well?” she asked. Well might she put the question: his face

was blanched as her gown.

“Quite well,” he enunciated; and, with a bow, he left the gate. She

went one way; he another. She turned twice to gaze after him as she

tripped fairy-like down the field; he, as he strode firmly across,

never turned at all.

This spectacle of another’s suffering and sacrifice rapt my thoughts

from exclusive meditation on my own. Diana Rivers had designated her

brother “inexorable as death.” She had not exaggerated.