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 shake 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 card-board 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.
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CHAPTER XXXIII
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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 my 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
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
