Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (437 page)

“You have from indulgence been accustomed Sir to feel too impatient when your days do not pass in unclouded sunshine — many pleasures one might hope for on awaking in the morning but so few are realized during the day that I accustom myself to recieve each visitation of joy as a boon — not as a right or even a thing to be expected and this feeling constantly cultivated allows me to go through my duties and bear any mortifications with such calmness as makes mind and body able to drink the cup of sorrow without a wry face and feel no intoxication from the cup of joy”

“Then is it Gods will and according to a just disposal of events that I should now return to disliked or uncongenial companions and leave you hugging your chain and like an Indian devotee proud to show that you can take your nap on a bed of ten penny nails or like a pugilist that you can smile after a sledge hammer hit on your teeth? Answer me — would it be well — would it accord with your ideas of justice should two persons resolve to do all they could to prevent mutual friendship and produce mutual pain?”

“No Sir — I believe our object ought to be the promotion of friendship and alleviation of pain.”

“To both ones own self and to all others?”

“Yes — as I would not reccommend suicide most certainly to ones self — but even before oneself to others because if every one in this world thought first of his neighbour and last of himself we should eventually be sure of happiness. Do not you see that for one grain of pleasure sacrificed every point of the
 
compass would return you a hundred fold?”

“And You — or myself are to don the pasteboard helmet of the Spanish hero and sally forth with the idea of sacrificing our happiness to the good of our fellow creatures, are we? No, no. It is enough that I wish to live for one being beside myself and not for one thousand millions. I wish by word and deed to comfort one whom I love and I only ask as a reward that she should not wholly dislike me.”

Mr Percy had now entered upon one of his usual fit of restless walking through an apartment which always attacked him when much excited and while obliged to hide feelings which inborn nature and constant indulgence through life impelled him to display. He would not so much as look at the fair face bending over a mechanical employment lest it should not precisely tally with his notion of the emotions he fancied it ought to feel and lest he should forget what was due to the gentleman under whose roof he was staying and by one wild outbreak of passion throw himself open to three alternatives of misery. The ruin of a Lady whom his very soul did really love just then — the risk of a bullet through his bosom from the pistol of the dark bilious faced person under whose roof he abode, and, worst of all, denial of Love — of sympathy — of sorrow for himself and dearly purchased knowledge of coldness and dislike from an answer to the half dozen sentences which were tingling on his tongue and to which the consciousness of their importance alone prevented him giving utterance. He dreaded every movement made by Mrs Thurston lest it should announce her departure from the room. He felt jealous of every change on her mild thoughtful face lest it should herald some stern avowal of feelings if toward himself, still severed by duty and that last idea so gained upon his mind that he broke the silence of the room by one abrupt question.

“Now Maria Thurston — I must be here for days or weeks and I must not during that time be laid on St Lawrences gridiron — So I ask you once and for all — will you — by preserving your thoroughly womanlike character and by allowing me to rest upon its feminine sweetness my masculine roughness — let my stay here be passable to my mind or will you shun me and make me conscious of the truth of that hideous saying that women care not for any man but live for the gratification of a vanity whose shrine is their looking glass or the hecatomb of real manly hearts that have burst under their whims and which will send up a fragrance when consuming on the altar of that Nova Zembla deity a bloodless woman proud to keep a real man in pain.”

“But Sir you have been married yourself and I should not intrude on your feelings perhaps by asking you whether or not your own lady assumed the
 
semblance of a Nova Zembla deity Did she only care for you as the means whereby she could gratify her vanity — did she never feel toward her husband as if pain to him would be double pain to herself?”

“Maria Thurston — You distress me — I have lost the sole charm of a fevered and broken life and I would willingly and innocently fill up the dreadful chasm that lies between the grave of her whom I did possess and the goal whose laurels must sooth the worry of my forthcoming life. What if that goal be
yourself
? Why should you shrink from intercommunion with
myself
whose every sinew would rouse to save your little finger from harm — Who besides me would make his life a secondary consideration to yours? Who besides me would foresake mans idol pleasure to worship what is too often womans idol pain — Who would, though you call him indulged, bear the pains of a prison to see you enjoy the pleasures of a palace.

You know what I mean Maria — You know what I have lost and what I would gain. Tell me — do you think that one who has for years been accustomed to repose a worried and wearied head on a warm and devoted bosom — now that the bosom is given over to corruption and that he is forced to feel jealous of worms — do you think that he no longer wants such a repose and while clouds are gathering and years closing round him he feels no wish for a ressurection of his buried joy? When I leave Darkwall and return to Percy Hall shall I not feel a sad vacancy when my lonely evenings after dinner are spent in studies where a weary head misses sadly the little hand that used to stroke its hair or the soft lap that used to ease its aching — where my little girl alone will give all that childhood can of affection but where I shall leave among northern clouds and heather the polar star of love — Oh do not start Maria Thurston for you too will think of me when I am gone — You will know too well what place you fill now — What place I would have you to fill to feel indifferent to Alexander Percy. Hours which did fate permit it — might be spent in a recalled paradise by my fireside will perforce contrast themselves with hours of neglect present to your heart and senses here. I am sure that ere the winds of winter blow the sleet against these windows you will have dropped some tears over the doom which denies to Maria Thurston the place of Mary Percy!”

“Sir — Sir — you must restrain this speech — I cannot bear it and beg you as a gentleman to spare me.”

“Must I not rather Maria — beg you to spare me? She whose heart is resigned to suffering has little to fear but his heart who feels that there is no medium between agony and enjoyment has every thing to dread especially if former time reappears like a ghost in the unattainable yet tantalizing prospects of the present time. Where shall we each be a year hence Maria? Were shall we be to night? Why I — if asleep at all — shall lie dreaming of ideas that

“Remind me of departed times —
Departed — never to return”

and you I am sure will be compelled to fancy that your uncherished cheek might be better nurtured than by comforts which stern crowns and hard usage could give you — Ah — You know not and till you shall have been tried you cannot know the yearnings of a mans heart left alone toward the heart of a woman whom he would wish to be part and parcel with himself.

“Oh Sir” exclaimed Mrs Thurston earnestly and with a face suddenly overmastered by pain — “Do not try to make me miserable — I have my sorrows and I have hitherto born them patiently. It can do no one good to remind me of lifes path mistaken or of pleasure to which it is impossible to attain”

“Then” answered Mr Percy while his expressive features beamed with serpent guile only rendered more dangerous from the intermixture of real anxiety — “Does Maria Thurston mean to enact a Suttee? Does she wish to immolate herself on the pile raised for a husband who never existed must she feel bound for ever to a master whom she scarce knows save by his tyranny and repulse the heartfelt sympathy of a friend?”

“A friend Sir! Do you not mock me by your use of the word?”

“I
do.
Maria, if the drowning man clings to a swimmer or a plank for salvation — if one who has had no peace in this life tries to drive despair from his death bed by his hopes of heaven. But I do
not
if my soul chooses thee as successor to a throne long vacant and a sceptre which no hand save thine can sway — Would that I could make thee believe me! Thou must know that I cannot pass a future existence on the mere memory of love — That one so young as I am will require to support his soul through a probably protracted life some encouragement better than a look backward on a sunny path while clouds and tempests brood over his forward road. But I will not argue — Thou lovest me and thou knowest that thou lovest me — Stop — do not answer or I shall push thee into perjury by asking at once “Dost thou hate me?” and as thy answer would certainly be “Yes” thou wouldest be utterly forsworn. Can I not read thy thoughts on thy pillow to night? and canst thou not read my own? Yes — yes — And if thyself and myself were kneeling together at the parsons altar thou wouldst waste but few moments of hesitation ere saying — however inaudibly with Addison and Haydn

“Lo my Shepherd is divine
How shall I want while he is mine”

The strange character which both adorned and cursed the speaker was exemplified in his last sentence for while absorbed in a subject which engrossed every mental and personal feeling he waywardly sported with a sneering allusion to a few lines
 
of verse and a beautiful snatch of pastoral music. which would have given his eyes the aspect of an angels had he been forced to take his seat at an organ or piano. But here — reclined on a sopha in this quiet ancient apartment and in the company of one who whatever she
suffered
would never
give
pain — He let his looks stray scenting the track of pleasure and his mind run hydrophobically biting at those whom his calmer feelings would lead him to cherish.

The morning sunlight shone through the window of a chamber in the Hotel, upon a head of curly auburn hair, a sad, pale face, and quivering lips laid on a restless pillow and shewing every feature in sickly guise save the wicked blue eyes that — to any one who knew their owner — augered some new ray of mischeivous caprice breaking through the clouds of sickness. Their owner, after a gentle sigh or two rung the bell and the chamber maid appeared.

“Fanny” said Percy “Whether my old groom be dead or alive — drunk or sober — send him to me forthwith.”

“Yes Sir — He has been up all night Sir, with some north country jobbers — They’ve been very noisy Sir.”

“And, Fanny, bring me a tumbler of Hollands with a dash of water in it, and — stop — I have something to say to you — Take a sovereign out of my waistcoat pocket — With ten shillings purchase mob caps, and with the other ten procure yourself a quantity of tracts which you can distribute about the house during the fair and by all means lay one on each tray that the waiters may bring in to company, as well as on every bed in the house.”

“There are some pretty songs Sir in one of the stalls”

“Oh Damn my — I mean Religious tracts my girl! Those printed at the Wesleyan Repository in London.”

Fanny looked at her sovereign as if destining it for another voyage than the one marked in her chart

“And, Fanny, take down those curls, and comb your hair parted in front — come here and I will shew you the way.”

Saying “Oh no Sir I can do it myself” Fanny departed on her errand, rather indignant that her favourite ornaments should be censured, and wholly puzzled to know what that strange wild gentleman meant this morning.

She shortly returned with the morning draught required, and along with her stumbled in the patriarchal form of old Robert, much afflicted with “all overishness” and modelling his face into the expression of a Lord Eldon pronouncing judgement on a chancery suit of a century in duration and a plum in
 
value.

“Well — you doubly hanged dog! Drunk as an owl I see! What have you been doing all night?”

“Searching after me truth Maister.”

“I have heard Truth was to be found at the bottom of a well, but I did not know it was a well of rum and water — But however — Bob, I have turned over a new leaf — I will neither Swear, whore, drink, gamble, rob, or commit manslaughter again — Damn me if I will!”

“Thank Him that Saves! O Maister yaw’re in a fearful gooid way!” and the old Saint clasping his hands together uttered a rapturous groan.

“Are you sober enough Bob to rattle through a healing prayer for me? Anything that has enough grace in it will come in nicely — Stay, Fanny, give me the tumbler — and halt Bob — have you never such an article as a Hymn book about you?”