chose, how they acquitted themselves, I no longer remember; but I
still see the consultation which followed each scene: I see Mr.
Rochester turn to Miss Ingram, and Miss Ingram to him; I see her
incline her head towards him, till the jetty curls almost touch his
shoulder and wave against his cheek; I hear their mutual
whisperings; I recall their interchanged glances; and something even
of the feeling roused by the spectacle returns in memory at this
moment.
I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I
could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to
notice me- because I might pass hours in his presence, and he would
never once turn his eyes in my direction- because I saw all his
attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me
with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and
imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as
from an object too mean to merit observation. I could not unlove
him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady- because I
read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her-
because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if
careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in
its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride,
irresistible.
There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances,
though much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to
engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be
jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous: or very
rarely;- the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by
that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too
inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean
what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine: she had a
fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her
heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no
unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good;
she was not original: she used to repeat sounding phrases from
books: she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She
advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the
sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her.
Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a
spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adele: pushing her
away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her;
sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with
coldness and acrimony. Other eyes besides mine watched these
manifestations of character- watched them closely, keenly, shrewdly.
Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over
his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this
sagacity- this guardedness of his- this perfect, clear consciousness
of his fair one's defects- this obvious absence of passion in his
sentiments towards her, that my ever-torturing pain arose.
I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political
reasons, because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had
not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted
to win from him that treasure. This was the point- this was where
the nerve was touched and teased- this was where the fever was
sustained and fed: she could not charm him.
If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and
sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face,
turned to the wall, and (figuratively) have died to them. If Miss
Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour,
kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers-
jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should
have admired her- acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for
the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper
would have been my admiration- the more truly tranquil my
quiescence. But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram's
efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated
failure- herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying
that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming
herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled
further and further what she wished to allure- to witness this, was to
be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.
Because, when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded.
Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and
fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand,
have quivered keen in his proud heart- have called love into his stern
eye, and softness into his sardonic face; or, better still, without
weapons a silent conquest might have been won.
'Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw
so near to him?' I asked myself. 'Surely she cannot truly like him, or
not like him with true affection! If she did, she need not coin her
smiles so lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture
airs so elaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she
might, by merely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and
looking less, get nigher his heart. I have seen in his face a far
different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so
vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not
elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had
but to accept it- to answer what he asked without pretension, to
address him when needful without grimace- and it increased and grew
kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam. How
will she manage to please him when they are married? I do not think
she will manage it; and yet it might be managed; and his wife might, I
verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun shines on.'
I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Rochester's
project of marrying for interest and connections. It surprised me when
I first discovered that such was his intention: I had thought him a
man unlikely to be influenced by motives so commonplace in his
choice of a wife; but the longer I considered the position, education,
etc., of the parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming
either him or Miss Ingram for acting in conformity to ideas and
principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their childhood. All
their class held these principles: I supposed, then, they had
reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me
that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only
such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the
advantages to the husband's own happiness offered by this plan
convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption
of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world
would act as I wished to act.
But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to
my master: I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once
kept a sharp look-out. It had formerly been my endeavour to study
all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from
the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no
bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me
once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their
presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively
insipid. And as for the vague something- was it a sinister or a
sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression?- that opened upon a
careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before
one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something
which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering
amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground
quiver and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld
still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves.
Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare- to divine it; and I
thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the
abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature.
Meantime, while I thought only of my master and his future bride-
saw only them, heard only their discourse, and considered only their
movements of importance- the rest of the party were occupied with
their own separate interests and pleasures. The Ladies Lynn and Ingram
continued to consort in solemn conferences, where they nodded their
two turbans at each other, and held up their four hands in confronting
gestures of surprise, or mystery, or horror, according to the theme on
which their gossip ran, like a pair of magnified puppets. Mild Mrs.
Dent talked with good-natured Mrs. Eshton; and the two sometimes
bestowed a courteous word or smile on me. Sir George Lynn, Colonel
Dent, and Mr. Eshton discussed politics, or county affairs, or justice
business. Lord Ingram flirted with Amy Eshton; Louisa played and
sang to and with one of the Messrs. Lynn; and Mary Ingram listened
languidly to the gallant speeches of the other. Sometimes all, as with
one consent, suspended their by-play to observe and listen to the
principal actors: for, after all, Mr. Rochester and- because closely
connected with him- Miss Ingram were the life and soul of the party.
If he was absent from the room an hour, a perceptible dulness seemed
to steal over the spirits of his guests; and his re-entrance was
sure to give a fresh impulse to the vivacity of conversation.
The want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly
felt one day that he had been summoned to Millcote on business, and
was not likely to return till late. The afternoon was wet: a walk
the party had proposed to take to see a gipsy camp, lately pitched
on a common beyond Hay, was consequently deferred. Some of the
gentlemen were gone to the stables: the younger ones, together with
the younger ladies, were playing billiards in the billiard-room. The
dowagers Ingram and Lynn sought solace in a quiet game at cards.
Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity,
some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into
conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and
airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the
library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and
prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of
absence. The room and the house were silent: only now and then the
merriment of the billiard-players was heard from above.
It was verging on dusk, and the dock had already given warning of
the hour to dress for dinner, when little Adele, who knelt by me in
the drawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed-
'Voila Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!'
I turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa: the
others, too, looked up from their several occupations; for at the same
time a crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became
audible on the wet gravel. A post-chaise was approaching.
'What can possess him to come home in that style?' said Miss
Ingram. 'He rode Mesrour (the black horse), did he not, when he went
out? and Pilot was with him:- what has he done with the animals?'
As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments
so near the window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the
breaking of my spine: in her eagerness she did not observe me at
first, but when she did, she curled her lip and moved to another
casement. The post-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell,
and a gentleman alighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not
Mr. Rochester; it was a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.
'How provoking!' exclaimed Miss Ingram: 'you tiresome monkey!'
(apostrophising Adele), 'who perched you up in the window to give
false intelligence?' and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I
were in fault.
Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the newcomer
entered. He bowed to Lady Ingram, as deeming her the eldest lady
present.
'It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam,' said he, 'when
my friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but I arrive from a very
long journey, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate
acquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns.'
His manner was polite; his accent, in speaking, struck me as
being somewhat unusual,- not precisely foreign, but still not
altogether English: his age might be about Mr. Rochester's,- between
thirty and forty; his complexion was singularly sallow: otherwise he
was a fine-looking man, at first sight especially. On closer
examination, you detected something in his face that displeased, or
rather that failed to please. His features were regular, but too
relaxed: his eye was large and well cut, but the life looking out of
it was a tame, vacant life- at least so I thought.
The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party. It was not till
after dinner that I saw him again: he then seemed quite at his ease.
But I liked his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as
being at the same time unsettled and inanimate. His eye wandered,
and had no meaning in its wandering: this gave him an odd look, such
as I never remembered to have seen. For a handsome and not an
unamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no
power in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no firmness in
that aquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the
low, even forehead; no command in that blank, brown eye.
As I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of
