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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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317 Meantime, let me ask myself one question-Which is better?- To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort-no struggle;- but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester’s mistress; delirious with his love half my time-for he would-oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He did love me-no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace-for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me-it is what no man besides will ever be.- But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool’s paradise at Marseillesfevered with delusive bliss one hour-suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next-or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England? Yes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment. God directed me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance! Having brought my eventide musings to this point, I rose, went to my door, and looked at the sunset of the harvest-day, and at the quiet fields before my cottage, which, with the school, was distant half a mile from the village. The birds were singing their last strains-‘The air was mild, the dew was balm.’ - While I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find myself ere long weeping-and why? For the doom which had reft me from adhesion to my master: for him I was no more to see; for the desperate grief and fatal fury-consequences of my departure- which might now, perhaps, be dragging him from the path of right, too far to leave hope of ultimate restoration thither. At this thought, I turned my face aside from the lovely sky of eve and lonely vale of Morton-I say lonely, for in that bend of it visible to me there was no building apparent save the church and the parsonage, halfhid in trees, and, quite at the extremity, the roof of Vale Hall, where the rich Mr. Oliver and his daughter lived. I hid my eyes, and leant my head against the stone frame of my door; but soon a slight noise near the wicket which shut in my tiny garden from the meadow beyond it made me look up. A dog-old Carlo, Mr. Rivers’ pointer, as I saw in a moment-was pushing the gate with his nose, and St. John himself leant upon it with folded arms; his brow knit, his gaze, grave almost to displeasure, fixed on me. I asked him to come in. |
