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 He had already withdrawn his eye from the Peri, and was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.
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
night, or rather this morning, I was dancing till two o'clock. The
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 Mis 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.
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CHAPTER XXXII
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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 good-will 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 Adele; except that, for a child whom we
have watched over and taught, a closer affection is engendered than we
