Part 6 (1/2)

It is another lesson on the nature of life, on its strange brevity, and in many instances apparent futility.... V---- came here on Sat.u.r.day last; T----, who was to have accompanied him, was prevented from executing his intention. I regretted his absence, for I by no means coveted the long _tete-a-tete_ with V----.

However, it pa.s.sed off pretty well. He is satisfied now with his own prospects, and this makes him--on the surface--satisfied with other things. He spoke of Q---- with content and approbation. He looks forward to marriage as a sort of harbour where he is to lay up his now somewhat battered vessel in quiet moorings. He has seen all he wants to see of life; now he is prepared to settle. I listened to all with equanimity and cheerfulness--not a.s.sumed but real--for Papa is now somewhat better; his appet.i.te and spirits are improved, and that eases my mind of cankering anxiety. My own health, too, is, I think, really benefited by the late changes of air and scene; I fancy, at any rate, that I feel stronger. Still I mused in my own way on V----'s character--its depth and scope, I believe, are ascertained.

I saw the governess at ----; she looked a little better and more cheerful. She was almost as pleased to see me as if we had been related; and when I bid her good-bye expressed an earnest hope that I would soon come again. The children seem fond of her, and on the whole obedient--two great alleviations of the inevitable evils of her position.

Cheer up, dear Nell, and try not to stagnate; or, when you cannot help it, and when your heart is constricted and oppressed, remember what life is and must be to all: some moments of suns.h.i.+ne alternating with many of overclouded and often tempestuous darkness. Humanity cannot escape its fate, which is to drink a mixed cup. Let us believe that the gall and the vinegar are salutary.

Sept. 14th, 1850.

I wish, dear Ellen, you would tell me what is the ”twaddle” about my marrying, which you hear. If I knew the details I should have a better chance of guessing the quarter from which such gossip comes. As it is I am quite at a loss. Whom am I to marry? I think I have scarcely seen a single man with whom such a union would be possible since I left London. Doubtless there are men whom, if I chose to encourage, I might marry. But no matrimonial lot is even remotely offered me which seems to me truly desirable. And even if that were the case there would be many obstacles. The least allusion to such a thing is most offensive to Papa. An article ent.i.tled ”Currer Bell” has lately appeared in _The Palladium_, a new periodical published in Edinburgh. It is an eloquent production, and one of such warm sympathy and high appreciation as I had never expected to see. It makes mistakes about authors.h.i.+p, &c, but those I hope one day to set right. Mr. X---- (the little man) first informed me of this article. I was somewhat surprised to receive his letter, having concluded nine months ago that there would be no more correspondence from that quarter. I enclose a note from him received subsequently, in answer to my acknowledgment.

Read it, and tell me exactly how it impresses you regarding the writer's character, &c. He is deficient neither in spirit nor sense.

October 14th, 1850.

I return Q----'s letter. She seems quite happy and fully satisfied of her husband's affection. Is this the usual way of spending the honeymoon? To me it seems as if they overdo it. That travelling, and tugging, and f.a.gging about, and getting drenched and muddled, by no means harmonises with my notions of happiness. Besides, the two meals a day, &c, would do one up. It all reminds me too sharply of the few days I spent with V---- in London nearly ten years since, when I was many a time fit to drop with the fever and the faintness resulting from long fasting and excessive fatigue.

However, no doubt a bride can bear such things better than others.

I smiled to myself at some pa.s.sages. She has wondrous faith in her husband's intellectual powers and acquirements. V----'s illusions will soon be over, but Q----'s will not--and therein she is happier than he.... I suppose ---- will probably discover that he, too, wants a wife. But I will say no more. You know I disapprove of jesting and teasing on these matters. Idle words sometimes do unintentional harm.

December, 1850.

I got home all right yesterday soon after two o'clock, and found Papa, thank G.o.d, well and free from cold. To-day some amount of sickliness and headache is bothering me, but nothing to signify.... The Christmas books waiting for me were, as I expected, from Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell, and Mr. Ruskin. No letter from Mr. W----. It is six weeks since I heard from him. I feel uneasy, but do not like to write. _The Examiner_ is very sore about my Preface, because I did not make it a special exception in speaking of the ma.s.s of critics. The soreness is unfortunate and gratuitous, for in my mind I certainly excepted it. Another paper shows painful sensitiveness on the same account; but it does not matter, these things are all transitory.

The ”Preface” to which she alludes in the foregoing letter, was that to her collected edition of Emily and Anne Bronte's works, in which she makes allusion to the fact that the ”critics failed to do justice”

to ”Wuthering Heights” and ”Agnes Grey” when they were published.

Jan. 20th, 1851.

Thank you heartily for the two letters I owe you. You seem very gay at present, and provided you only take care not to catch cold with coming home at night, I am not sorry to hear it; a little movement, cheerfulness, stimulus, is not only beneficial, but necessary. Your last letter but one made me smile. I think you draw great conclusions from small inferences. I think those ”fixed intentions” you fancy are imaginary. I think the ”under-current”

amounts simply to this, a kind of natural liking and sense of something congenial. Were there no vast barrier of age, fortune, &c, there is perhaps enough personal regard to make things possible which now are impossible. If men and women married because they like each other's temper, look, conversation, nature, and so on--and if, besides, years were more nearly equal--the chance you allude to might be admitted as a chance; but other reasons regulate matrimony--reasons of convenience, of connection, of money. Meantime I am content to know him as a friend, and pray G.o.d to continue to me the common sense to look on one so young, so rising, and so hopeful in no other light. The hint about the Rhine disturbs me; I am not made of stone and what is mere excitement to others is fever to me. However it is a matter for the future, and long to look forward to. As I see it now, the journey is out of the question--for many reasons--I rather wonder he should think of it. Good-bye. Heaven grant us both some quiet wisdom and strength, not merely to bear the trial of pain, but to resist the lure of pleasure when it comes in such a shape as our better judgment disapproves.

Feb. 26th, 1851.

You ought always to conclude that when I don't write it is simply because I have nothing particular to say. Be sure that ill news will travel fast enough, and good news too when such commodity comes. If I could often _be_ or _seem_ in brisk spirits, I might write oftener, knowing that my letters would amuse. But as times go, a glimpse of suns.h.i.+ne now and then is as much as one has a right to expect. However, I get on very decently. I am now and then tempted to break through my resolution of not having you to come before summer, and to ask you to come to this Patmos in a week or two. But it would be dull--very dull--for you.... What would you say to coming here the week after next to stay only just so long as you could comfortably bear the monotony? If the weather were dry, and the moors fine, I should not mind it so much--we could walk for change.

About this time it is clear that Miss Bronte was suffering from one of her periodical attacks of nervous exhaustion. She makes repeated references in her letters to her ailments, attributing them generally to her liver, and she also mentions frequently an occurrence which had given her not a little anxiety and concern. This was an offer of marriage from a business man in a good position, whom she had already met in London. The following letters, which are inserted here without regard to the precise date, and of which Mrs. Gaskell has merely used half-a-dozen lines, relate to this subject:

You are to say no more about ”Jupiter” and ”Venus.” What do you mean by such heathen trash? The fact is no fallacy can be wilder, and I won't have it hinted at, even in jest because my common sense laughs it to scorn. The idea of X---- shocks me less; it would be a more likely match, if ”matches” were at all in question, _which they are not_. He still sends his little newspaper, and the other day there came a letter of a bulk, volume, pith, judgment, and knowledge, worthy to have been the product of a giant.

X---- has been, and is gone; things are just as they were. I only know, in addition to the slight information I possessed before, that this Australian undertaking is necessary to the continued prosperity of his firm, that he alone was p.r.o.nounced to possess the power and means to carry it out successfully, that mercantile honour, combined with his own sense of duty, obliged him to accept the post of honour and of danger to which he has been appointed, that he goes with great personal reluctance, and that he contemplates an absence of five years. He looked much thinner and older. I saw him very near, and once through my gla.s.s. The resemblance to Branwell struck me forcibly; it is marked. He is not ugly, but very peculiar. The lines in his face show an inflexibility, and, I must add, a hardness of character, which does not attract. As he stood near me, as he looked at me in his keen way, it was all I could do to stand my ground tranquilly and steadily, and not to recoil as before. It is no use saying anything if I am not candid. I avow then that on this occasion, predisposed as I was to regard him very favourably, his manners and his personal appearance scarcely pleased me more than at the first interview. He gave me a book at parting, requesting in his brief way that I would keep it for his sake, and adding hastily: ”I shall hope to hear from you in Australia; your letters _have_ been and _will_ be a greater refreshment than you can think or I can tell.” And so he is gone, and stern and abrupt little man as he is, too often jarring as are his manners, his absence and the exclusion of his idea from my mind, leave me certainly with less support and in deeper solitude than before. You see, dear Nell, we are still precisely on the same level. _You_ are not isolated. I feel that there is a certain mystery about this transaction yet, and whether it will ever be cleared up to me, I do not know.

However, my plain duty is to wean my mind from the subject, and if possible to avoid pondering over it.... I feel that in his way he has a regard for me; a regard which I cannot bring myself entirely to reciprocate in kind, and yet its withdrawal leaves a painful blank. I have just got your note. Above, you have all the account of my visitor. I dare not aver that your kind wish that the visit would yield me more pleasure than pain has been fulfilled.

Something at my heart aches and gnaws drearily. But I must cultivate fort.i.tude.

Thank you for your kind note. It was kind of you to write it, though it _was_ your school-day. I never knew you to let a slight impediment stand in your way when doing a friendly action.

Certainly I shall not soon forget last Friday, and never, I think, the evening and night succeeding that morning and afternoon. Evils seldom come singly, and soon after X---- was gone Papa grew much worse. He went to bed early. Was sick and ill for an hour, and when at last he began to doze and I left him, I came down to the dining-room with a sense of weight, fear, and desolation hard to express and harder to endure. A wish that you were with me did cross my mind; but I repelled it as a most selfish wish. Indeed it was only short-lived; my natural tendency in moments of this sort is to get through the struggle alone; to think that one is burdening others makes all worse. You speak to me in soft, consolatory accents; but I hold far sterner language to myself, dear Nell. An absence of five years; a dividing expanse of three oceans; the wide difference between a man's active career and a woman's pa.s.sive existence. These things are almost equivalent to a life-long separation. But there is another thing which forms a barrier more difficult to pa.s.s than any of these. Would X---- and I ever suit? Could I ever feel for him enough love to accept of him as a husband? Friends.h.i.+p, grat.i.tude, esteem, I have; but each moment that he came near me, and that I could see his eyes fastened upon me, my veins ran ice. Now that he is away I feel far more gently towards him; it is only close by that I grow rigid. I did not want to be proud nor intend to be proud, but I was forced to be so. Most true is it that we are overruled by One above us, that in His hands our very will is as clay in the hands of the potter.