Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (55 page)

“Is this portrait like?” I asked bluntly.

“Like!  Like whom?  I did not observe it closely.”

“You did, Mr. Rivers.”

He almost started at my sudden and strange abruptness: he looked at me astonished.  “Oh, that is nothing yet,” I muttered within.  “I don’t mean to be baffled by a little stiffness on your part; I’m prepared to go to considerable lengths.”  I continued, “You observed it closely and distinctly; but I have no objection to your looking at it again,” and I rose and placed it in his hand.

“A well-executed picture,” he said; “very soft, clear colouring; very graceful and correct drawing.”

“Yes, yes; I know all that.  But what of the resemblance?  Who is it like?”

Mastering some hesitation, he answered, “Miss Oliver, I presume.”

“Of course.  And now, sir, to reward you for the accurate guess, I will promise to paint you a careful and faithful duplicate of this very picture, provided you admit that the gift would be acceptable to you.  I don’t wish to throw away my time and trouble on an offering you would deem worthless.”

He continued to gaze at the picture: the longer he looked, the firmer he held it, the more he seemed to covet it.  “It is like!” he murmured; “the eye is well managed: the colour, light, expression, are perfect.  It smiles!”

“Would it comfort, or would it wound you to have a similar painting?  Tell me that.  When you are at Madagascar, or at the Cape, or in India, would it be a consolation to have that memento in your possession? or would the sight of it bring recollections calculated to enervate and distress?”

He now furtively raised his eyes: he glanced at me, irresolute, disturbed: he again surveyed the picture.

“That I should like to have it is certain: whether it would be judicious or wise is another question.”

Since I had ascertained that Rosamond really preferred him, and that her father was not likely to oppose the match, I — less exalted in my views than St. John — had been strongly disposed in my own heart to advocate their union.  It seemed to me that, should he become the possessor of Mr. Oliver’s large fortune, he might do as much good with it as if he went and laid his genius out to wither, and his strength to waste, under a tropical sun.  With this persuasion I now answered —

“As far as I can see, it would be wiser and more judicious if you were to take to yourself the original at once.”

By this time he had sat down: he had laid the picture on the table before him, and with his brow supported on both hands, hung fondly over it.  I discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my audacity.  I saw even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject he had deemed unapproachable — to hear it thus freely handled — was beginning to be felt by him as a new pleasure — an unhoped-for relief.  Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive.  The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and to “burst” with boldness and good-will into “the silent sea” of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations.

“She likes you, I am sure,” said I, as I stood behind his chair, “and her father respects you.  Moreover, she is a sweet girl — rather thoughtless; but you would have sufficient thought for both yourself and her.  You ought to marry her.”

“
Does
she like me?” he asked.

“Certainly; better than she likes any one else.  She talks of you continually: there is no subject she enjoys so much or touches upon so often.”

“It is very pleasant to hear this,” he said — “very: go on for another quarter of an hour.”  And he actually took out his watch and laid it upon the table to measure the time.

“But where is the use of going on,” I asked, “when you are probably preparing some iron blow of contradiction, or forging a fresh chain to fetter your heart?”

“Don’t imagine such hard things.  Fancy me yielding and melting, as I am doing: human love rising like a freshly opened fountain in my mind and overflowing with sweet inundation all the field I have so carefully and with such labour prepared — so assiduously sown with the seeds of good intentions, of self-denying plans.  And now it is deluged with a nectarous flood — the young germs swamped — delicious poison cankering them: now I see myself stretched on an ottoman in the drawing-room at Vale Hall at my bride Rosamond Oliver’s feet: she is talking to me with her sweet voice — gazing down on me with those eyes your skilful hand has copied so well — smiling at me with these coral lips.  She is mine — I am hers — this present life and passing world suffice to me.  Hush! say nothing — my heart is full of delight — my senses are entranced — let the time I marked pass in peace.”

I humoured him: the watch ticked on: he breathed fast and low: I stood silent.  Amidst this hush the quartet sped; he replaced the watch, laid the picture down, rose, and stood on the hearth.

“Now,” said he, “that little space was given to delirium and delusion.  I rested my temples on the breast of temptation, and put my neck voluntarily under her yoke of flowers.  I tasted her cup.  The pillow was burning: there is an asp in the garland: the wine has a bitter taste: her promises are hollow — her offers false: I see and know all this.”

I gazed at him in wonder.

“It is strange,” pursued he, “that while I love Rosamond Oliver so wildly — with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, fascinating — I experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months’ rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret.  This I know.”

“Strange indeed!” I could not help ejaculating.

“While something in me,” he went on, “is acutely sensible to her charms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects: they are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to — co-operate in nothing I undertook.  Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle?  Rosamond a missionary’s wife?  No!”

“But you need not be a missionary.  You might relinquish that scheme.”

“Relinquish!  What! my vocation?  My great work?  My foundation laid on earth for a mansion in heaven?  My hopes of being numbered in the band who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their race — of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance — of substituting peace for war — freedom for bondage — religion for superstition — the hope of heaven for the fear of hell?  Must I relinquish that?  It is dearer than the blood in my veins.  It is what I have to look forward to, and to live for.”

After a considerable pause, I said — “And Miss Oliver?  Are her disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you?”

“Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers: in less than a month, my image will be effaced from her heart.  She will forget me; and will marry, probably, some one who will make her far happier than I should do.”

“You speak coolly enough; but you suffer in the conflict.  You are wasting away.”

“No.  If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet unsettled — my departure, continually procrastinated.  Only this morning, I received intelligence that the successor, whose arrival I have been so long expecting, cannot be ready to replace me for three months to come yet; and perhaps the three months may extend to six.”

“You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Oliver enters the schoolroom.”

Again the surprised expression crossed his face.  He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man.  For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse.  I could never rest in communication with strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart’s very hearthstone.

“You are original,” said he, “and not timid.  There is something brave in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow me to assure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions.  You think them more profound and potent than they are.  You give me a larger allowance of sympathy than I have a just claim to.  When I colour, and when I shade before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself.  I scorn the weakness.  I know it is ignoble: a mere fever of the flesh: not, I declare, the convulsion of the soul. 
That
is just as fixed as a rock, firm set in the depths of a restless sea.  Know me to be what I am — a cold hard man.”

I smiled incredulously.

“You have taken my confidence by storm,” he continued, “and now it is much at your service.  I am simply, in my original state — stripped of that blood-bleached robe with which Christianity covers human deformity — a cold, hard, ambitious man.  Natural affection only, of all the sentiments, has permanent power over me.  Reason, and not feeling, is my guide; my ambition is unlimited: my desire to rise higher, to do more than others, insatiable.  I honour endurance, perseverance, industry, talent; because these are the means by which men achieve great ends and mount to lofty eminence.  I watch your career with interest, because I consider you a specimen of a diligent, orderly, energetic woman: not because I deeply compassionate what you have gone through, or what you still suffer.”

“You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher,” I said.

“No.  There is this difference between me and deistic philosophers: I believe; and I believe the Gospel.  You missed your epithet.  I am not a pagan, but a Christian philosopher — a follower of the sect of Jesus.  As His disciple I adopt His pure, His merciful, His benignant doctrines.  I advocate them: I am sworn to spread them.  Won in youth to religion, she has cultivated my original qualities thus: — From the minute germ, natural affection, she has developed the overshadowing tree, philanthropy.  From the wild stringy root of human uprightness, she has reared a due sense of the Divine justice.  Of the ambition to win power and renown for my wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread my Master’s kingdom; to achieve victories for the standard of the cross.  So much has religion done for me; turning the original materials to the best account; pruning and training nature.  But she could not eradicate nature: nor will it be eradicated ‘till this mortal shall put on immortality.’”

Having said this, he took his hat, which lay on the table beside my palette.  Once more he looked at the portrait.

“She
is
lovely,” he murmured.  “She is well named the Rose of the World, indeed!”

“And may I not paint one like it for you?”

“
Cui bono
?  No.”

He drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was accustomed to rest my hand in painting, to prevent the cardboard from being sullied.  What he suddenly saw on this blank paper, it was impossible for me to tell; but something had caught his eye.  He took it up with a snatch; he looked at the edge; then shot a glance at me, inexpressibly peculiar, and quite incomprehensible: a glance that seemed to take and make note of every point in my shape, face, and dress; for it traversed all, quick, keen as lightning.  His lips parted, as if to speak: but he checked the coming sentence, whatever it was.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

“Nothing in the world,” was the reply; and, replacing the paper, I saw him dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin.  It disappeared in his glove; and, with one hasty nod and “good-afternoon,” he vanished.

“Well!” I exclaimed, using an expression of the district, “that caps the globe, however!”

I, in my turn, scrutinised the paper; but saw nothing on it save a few dingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my pencil.  I pondered the mystery a minute or two; but finding it insolvable, and being certain it could not be of much moment, I dismissed, and soon forgot it.

CHAPTER XXXIII

When Mr. St. John went, it was beginning to snow; the whirling storm continued all night.  The next day a keen wind brought fresh and blinding falls; by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost impassable.  I had closed my shutter, laid a mat to the door to prevent the snow from blowing in under it, trimmed my fire, and after sitting nearly an hour on the hearth listening to the muffled fury of the tempest, I lit a candle, took down “Marmion,” and beginning —

“Day set on Norham’s castled steep,

And Tweed’s fair river broad and deep,

   And Cheviot’s mountains lone;

The massive towers, the donjon keep,

The flanking walls that round them sweep,

   In yellow lustre shone” —

I soon forgot storm in music.

I heard a noise: the wind, I thought, shook the door.  No; it was St. John Rivers, who, lifting the latch, came in out of the frozen hurricane — the howling darkness — and stood before me: the cloak that covered his tall figure all white as a glacier.  I was almost in consternation, so little had I expected any guest from the blocked-up vale that night.

“Any ill news?” I demanded.  “Has anything happened?”

“No.  How very easily alarmed you are!” he answered, removing his cloak and hanging it up against the door, towards which he again coolly pushed the mat which his entrance had deranged.  He stamped the snow from his boots.

“I shall sully the purity of your floor,” said he, “but you must excuse me for once.”  Then he approached the fire.  “I have had hard work to get here, I assure you,” he observed, as he warmed his hands over the flame.  “One drift took me up to the waist; happily the snow is quite soft yet.”

“But why are you come?” I could not forbear saying.

“Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor; but since you ask it, I answer simply to have a little talk with you; I got tired of my mute books and empty rooms.  Besides, since yesterday I have experienced the excitement of a person to whom a tale has been half-told, and who is impatient to hear the sequel.”

He sat down.  I recalled his singular conduct of yesterday, and really I began to fear his wits were touched.  If he were insane, however, his was a very cool and collected insanity: I had never seen that handsome-featured face of his look more like chiselled marble than it did just now, as he put aside his snow-wet hair from his forehead and let the firelight shine free on his pale brow and cheek as pale, where it grieved me to discover the hollow trace of care or sorrow now so plainly graved.  I waited, expecting he would say something I could at least comprehend; but his hand was now at his chin, his finger on his lip: he was thinking.  It struck me that his hand looked wasted like his face.  A perhaps uncalled-for gush of pity came over my heart: I was moved to say —

“I wish Diana or Mary would come and live with you: it is too bad that you should be quite alone; and you are recklessly rash about your own health.”

“Not at all,” said he: “I care for myself when necessary.  I am well now.  What do you see amiss in me?”

This was said with a careless, abstracted indifference, which showed that my solicitude was, at least in his opinion, wholly superfluous.  I was silenced.

He still slowly moved his finger over his upper lip, and still his eye dwelt dreamily on the glowing grate; thinking it urgent to say something, I asked him presently if he felt any cold draught from the door, which was behind him.

“No, no!” he responded shortly and somewhat testily.

“Well,” I reflected, “if you won’t talk, you may be still; I’ll let you alone now, and return to my book.”

So I snuffed the candle and resumed the perusal of “Marmion.”  He soon stirred; my eye was instantly drawn to his movements; he only took out a morocco pocket-book, thence produced a letter, which he read in silence, folded it, put it back, relapsed into meditation.  It was vain to try to read with such an inscrutable fixture before me; nor could I, in impatience, consent to be dumb; he might rebuff me if he liked, but talk I would.

“Have you heard from Diana and Mary lately?”

“Not since the letter I showed you a week ago.”

“There has not been any change made about your own arrangements?  You will not be summoned to leave England sooner than you expected?”

“I fear not, indeed: such chance is too good to befall me.”  Baffled so far, I changed my ground.  I bethought myself to talk about the school and my scholars.

“Mary Garrett’s mother is better, and Mary came back to the school this morning, and I shall have four new girls next week from the Foundry Close — they would have come to-day but for the snow.”

“Indeed!”

“Mr. Oliver pays for two.”

“Does he?”

“He means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas.”

“I know.”

“Was it your suggestion?”

“No.”

“Whose, then?”

“His daughter’s, I think.”

“It is like her: she is so good-natured.”

“Yes.”

Again came the blank of a pause: the clock struck eight strokes.  It aroused him; he uncrossed his legs, sat erect, turned to me.

“Leave your book a moment, and come a little nearer the fire,” he said.

Wondering, and of my wonder finding no end, I complied.

“Half-an-hour ago,” he pursued, “I spoke of my impatience to hear the sequel of a tale: on reflection, I find the matter will be better managed by my assuming the narrator’s part, and converting you into a listener.  Before commencing, it is but fair to warn you that the story will sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears; but stale details often regain a degree of freshness when they pass through new lips.  For the rest, whether trite or novel, it is short.

“Twenty years ago, a poor curate — never mind his name at this moment — fell in love with a rich man’s daughter; she fell in love with him, and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding.  Before two years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by side under one slab.  (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in — -shire.)  They left a daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap — cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night.  Charity carried the friendless thing to the house of its rich maternal relations; it was reared by an aunt-in-law, called (I come to names now) Mrs. Reed of Gateshead.  You start — did you hear a noise?  I daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the rafters of the adjoining schoolroom: it was a barn before I had it repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted by rats. — To proceed.  Mrs. Reed kept the orphan ten years: whether it was happy or not with her, I cannot say, never having been told; but at the end of that time she transferred it to a place you know — being no other than Lowood School, where you so long resided yourself.  It seems her career there was very honourable: from a pupil, she became a teacher, like yourself — really it strikes me there are parallel points in her history and yours — she left it to be a governess: there, again, your fates were analogous; she undertook the education of the ward of a certain Mr. Rochester.”

“Mr. Rivers!” I interrupted.

“I can guess your feelings,” he said, “but restrain them for a while: I have nearly finished; hear me to the end.  Of Mr. Rochester’s character I know nothing, but the one fact that he professed to offer honourable marriage to this young girl, and that at the very altar she discovered he had a wife yet alive, though a lunatic.  What his subsequent conduct and proposals were is a matter of pure conjecture; but when an event transpired which rendered inquiry after the governess necessary, it was discovered she was gone — no one could tell when, where, or how.  She had left Thornfield Hall in the night; every research after her course had been vain: the country had been scoured far and wide; no vestige of information could be gathered respecting her.  Yet that she should be found is become a matter of serious urgency: advertisements have been put in all the papers; I myself have received a letter from one Mr. Briggs, a solicitor, communicating the details I have just imparted.  Is it not an odd tale?”

“Just tell me this,” said I, “and since you know so much, you surely can tell it me — what of Mr. Rochester?  How and where is he?  What is he doing?  Is he well?”

“I am ignorant of all concerning Mr. Rochester: the letter never mentions him but to narrate the fraudulent and illegal attempt I have adverted to.  You should rather ask the name of the governess — the nature of the event which requires her appearance.”

“Did no one go to Thornfield Hall, then?  Did no one see Mr. Rochester?”

“I suppose not.”

“But they wrote to him?”

“Of course.”

“And what did he say?  Who has his letters?”

“Mr. Briggs intimates that the answer to his application was not from Mr. Rochester, but from a lady: it is signed ‘Alice Fairfax.’”

I felt cold and dismayed: my worst fears then were probably true: he had in all probability left England and rushed in reckless desperation to some former haunt on the Continent.  And what opiate for his severe sufferings — what object for his strong passions — had he sought there?  I dared not answer the question.  Oh, my poor master — once almost my husband — whom I had often called “my dear Edward!”

“He must have been a bad man,” observed Mr. Rivers.

“You don’t know him — don’t pronounce an opinion upon him,” I said, with warmth.

“Very well,” he answered quietly: “and indeed my head is otherwise occupied than with him: I have my tale to finish.  Since you won’t ask the governess’s name, I must tell it of my own accord.  Stay!  I have it here — it is always more satisfactory to see important points written down, fairly committed to black and white.”

And the pocket-book was again deliberately produced, opened, sought through; from one of its compartments was extracted a shabby slip of paper, hastily torn off: I recognised in its texture and its stains of ultra-marine, and lake, and vermillion, the ravished margin of the portrait-cover.  He got up, held it close to my eyes: and I read, traced in Indian ink, in my own handwriting, the words “Jane Eyre” — the work doubtless of some moment of abstraction.

“Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Eyre:” he said, “the advertisements demanded a Jane Eyre: I knew a Jane Elliott. — I confess I had my suspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once resolved into certainty.  You own the name and renounce the
alias
?”

“Yes — yes; but where is Mr. Briggs?  He perhaps knows more of Mr. Rochester than you do.”

“Briggs is in London.  I should doubt his knowing anything at all about Mr. Rochester; it is not in Mr. Rochester he is interested.  Meantime, you forget essential points in pursuing trifles: you do not inquire why Mr. Briggs sought after you — what he wanted with you.”

“Well, what did he want?”

“Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead; that he has left you all his property, and that you are now rich — merely that — nothing more.”

“I! — rich?”

“Yes, you, rich — quite an heiress.”

Silence succeeded.

“You must prove your identity of course,” resumed St. John presently: “a step which will offer no difficulties; you can then enter on immediate possession.  Your fortune is vested in the English funds; Briggs has the will and the necessary documents.”

Here was a new card turned up!  It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted in a moment from indigence to wealth — a very fine thing; but not a matter one can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at once.  And then there are other chances in life far more thrilling and rapture-giving:
this
is solid, an affair of the actual world, nothing ideal about it: all its associations are solid and sober, and its manifestations are the same.  One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune; one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.