Books: Jane Eyre

C >> Charlotte Bronte >> Jane Eyre

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41

"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. 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.