Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
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.
CHAPTER XXXII
I continued the labours of the village-school as actively and
faithfully as I could. It was truly hard work at first. Some time
elapsed before, with all my efforts, I could comprehend my scholars and
their nature. Wholly untaught, with faculties quite torpid, they seemed
to me hopelessly dull; and, at first sight, all dull alike: but I soon
found I was mistaken. There was a difference amongst them as amongst
the educated; and when I got to know them, and they me, this difference
rapidly developed itself. Their amazement at me, my language, my rules,
and ways, once subsided, I found some of these heavy-looking, gaping
rustics wake up into sharp-witted girls enough. Many showed themselves
obliging, and amiable too; and I discovered amongst them not a few
examples of natural politeness, and innate self-respect, as well as of
excellent capacity, that won both my goodwill and my admiration. These
soon took a pleasure in doing their work well, in keeping their persons
neat, in learning their tasks regularly, in acquiring quiet and orderly
manners. The rapidity of their progress, in some instances, was even
surprising; and an honest and happy pride I took in it: besides, I
began personally to like some of the best girls; and they liked me. I
had amongst my scholars several farmers’ daughters: young women grown,
almost. These could already read, write, and sew; and to them I taught
the elements of grammar, geography, history, and the finer kinds of
needlework. I found estimable characters amongst them—characters
desirous of information and disposed for improvement—with whom I passed
many a pleasant evening hour in their own homes. Their parents then
(the farmer and his wife) loaded me with attentions. There was an
enjoyment in accepting their simple kindness, and in repaying it by a
consideration—a scrupulous regard to their feelings—to which they were
not, perhaps, at all times accustomed, and which both charmed and
benefited them; because, while it elevated them in their own eyes, it
made them emulous to merit the deferential treatment they received.
I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood. Whenever I went out,
I heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with
friendly smiles. To live amidst general regard, though it be but the
regard of working people, is like “sitting in sunshine, calm and
sweet;” serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray. At this
period of my life, my heart far oftener swelled with thankfulness than
sank with dejection: and yet, reader, to tell you all, in the midst of
this calm, this useful existence—after a day passed in honourable
exertion amongst my scholars, an evening spent in drawing or reading
contentedly alone—I used to rush into strange dreams at night: dreams
many-coloured, agitated, full of the ideal, the stirring, the
stormy—dreams where, amidst unusual scenes, charged with adventure,
with agitating risk and romantic chance, I still again and again met
Mr. Rochester, always at some exciting crisis; and then the sense of
being in his arms, hearing his voice, meeting his eye, touching his
hand and cheek, loving him, being loved by him—the hope of passing a
lifetime at his side, would be renewed, with all its first force and
fire. Then I awoke. Then I recalled where I was, and how situated. Then
I rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering; and then the
still, dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair, and heard the
burst of passion. By nine o’clock the next morning I was punctually
opening the school; tranquil, settled, prepared for the steady duties
of the day.
Rosamond Oliver kept her word in coming to visit me. Her call at the
school was generally made in the course of her morning ride. She would
canter up to the door on her pony, followed by a mounted livery
servant. Anything more exquisite than her appearance, in her purple
habit, with her Amazon’s cap of black velvet placed gracefully above
the long curls that kissed her cheek and floated to her shoulders, can
scarcely be imagined: and it was thus she would enter the rustic
building, and glide through the dazzled ranks of the village children.
She generally came at the hour when Mr. Rivers was engaged in giving
his daily catechising lesson. Keenly, I fear, did the eye of the
visitress pierce the young pastor’s heart. A sort of instinct seemed to
warn him of her entrance, even when he did not see it; and when he was
looking quite away from the door, if she appeared at it, his cheek
would glow, and his marble-seeming features, though they refused to
relax, changed indescribably, and in their very quiescence became
expressive of a repressed fervour, stronger than working muscle or
darting glance could indicate.
Of course, she knew her power: indeed, he did not, because he could
not, conceal it from her. In spite of his Christian stoicism, when she
went up and addressed him, and smiled gaily, encouragingly, even fondly
in his face, his hand would tremble and his eye burn. He seemed to say,
with his sad and resolute look, if he did not say it with his lips, “I
love you, and I know you prefer me. It is not despair of success that
keeps me dumb. If I offered my heart, I believe you would accept it.
But that heart is already laid on a sacred altar: the fire is arranged
round it. It will soon be no more than a sacrifice consumed.”
And then she would pout like a disappointed child; a pensive cloud
would soften her radiant vivacity; she would withdraw her hand hastily
from his, and turn in transient petulance from his aspect, at once so
heroic and so martyr-like. St. John, no doubt, would have given the
world to follow, recall, retain her, when she thus left him; but he
would not give one chance of heaven, nor relinquish, for the elysium of
her love, one hope of the true, eternal Paradise. Besides, he could not
bind all that he had in his nature—the rover, the aspirant, the poet,
the priest—in the limits of a single passion. He could not—he would
not—renounce his wild field of mission warfare for the parlours and the
peace of Vale Hall. I learnt so much from himself in an inroad I once,
despite his reserve, had the daring to make on his confidence.
Miss Oliver already honoured me with frequent visits to my cottage. I
had learnt her whole character, which was without mystery or disguise:
she was coquettish but not heartless; exacting, but not worthlessly
selfish. She had been indulged from her birth, but was not absolutely
spoilt. She was hasty, but good-humoured; vain (she could not help it,
when every glance in the glass showed her such a flush of loveliness),
but not affected; liberal-handed; innocent of the pride of wealth;
ingenuous; sufficiently intelligent; gay, lively, and unthinking: she
was very charming, in short, even to a cool observer of her own sex
like me; but she was not profoundly interesting or thoroughly
impressive. A very different sort of mind was hers from that, for
instance, of the sisters of St. John. Still, I liked her almost as I
liked my pupil Adèle; except that, for a child whom we have watched
over and taught, a closer affection is engendered than we can give an
equally attractive adult acquaintance.
She had taken an amiable caprice to me. She said I was like Mr. Rivers,
only, certainly, she allowed, “not one-tenth so handsome, though I was
a nice neat little soul enough, but he was an angel.” I was, however,
good, clever, composed, and firm, like him. I was a _lusus naturæ_, she
affirmed, as a village schoolmistress: she was sure my previous
history, if known, would make a delightful romance.
One evening, while, with her usual child-like activity, and thoughtless
yet not offensive inquisitiveness, she was rummaging the cupboard and
the table-drawer of my little kitchen, she discovered first two French
books, a volume of Schiller, a German grammar and dictionary, and then
my drawing-materials and some sketches, including a pencil-head of a
pretty little cherub-like girl, one of my scholars, and sundry views
from nature, taken in the Vale of Morton and on the surrounding moors.
She was first transfixed with surprise, and then electrified with
delight.
“Had I done these pictures? Did I know French and German? What a
love—what a miracle I was! I drew better than her master in the first
school in S——. Would I sketch a portrait of her, to show to papa?”