Shirley, Charlotte Brontë [free children's ebooks online .txt] 📗

governess, as the duties of the position would be too severe for your constitution. Not one word of disrespect would I breathe towards either Mrs. or Miss Hardman; only, recalling my own experience, I cannot but feel that, were you to fall under auspices such as theirs, you would contend a while courageously with your doom, then you would pine and grow too weak for your work; you would come home⁠—if you still had a home⁠—broken down. Those languishing years would follow of which none but the invalid and her immediate friends feel the heartsickness and know the burden. Consumption or decline would close the chapter. Such is the history of many a life. I would not have it yours. My dear, we will now walk about a little, if you please.”

They both rose, and slowly paced a green natural terrace bordering the chasm.

“My dear,” ere long again began Mrs. Pryor, a sort of timid, embarrassed abruptness marking her manner as she spoke, “the young, especially those to whom nature has been favourable, often⁠—frequently⁠—anticipate⁠—look forward to⁠—to marriage as the end, the goal of their hopes.”

And she stopped. Caroline came to her relief with promptitude, showing a great deal more self-possession and courage than herself on the formidable topic now broached.

“They do, and naturally,” she replied, with a calm emphasis that startled Mrs. Pryor. “They look forward to marriage with someone they love as the brightest, the only bright destiny that can await them. Are they wrong?”

“Oh, my dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Pryor, clasping her hands; and again she paused. Caroline turned a searching, an eager eye on the face of her friend: that face was much agitated. “My dear,” she murmured, “life is an illusion.”

“But not love! Love is real⁠—the most real, the most lasting, the sweetest and yet the bitterest thing we know.”

“My dear, it is very bitter. It is said to be strong⁠—strong as death! Most of the cheats of existence are strong. As to their sweetness, nothing is so transitory; its date is a moment, the twinkling of an eye. The sting remains forever. It may perish with the dawn of eternity, but it tortures through time into its deepest night.”

“Yes, it tortures through time,” agreed Caroline, “except when it is mutual love.”

“Mutual love! My dear, romances are pernicious. You do not read them, I hope?”

“Sometimes⁠—whenever I can get them, indeed. But romance-writers might know nothing of love, judging by the way in which they treat of it.”

“Nothing whatever, my dear,” assented Mrs. Pryor eagerly, “nor of marriage; and the false pictures they give of those subjects cannot be too strongly condemned. They are not like reality. They show you only the green, tempting surface of the marsh, and give not one faithful or truthful hint of the slough underneath.”

“But it is not always slough,” objected Caroline. “There are happy marriages. Where affection is reciprocal and sincere, and minds are harmonious, marriage must be happy.”

“It is never wholly happy. Two people can never literally be as one. There is, perhaps, a possibility of content under peculiar circumstances, such as are seldom combined; but it is as well not to run the risk⁠—you may make fatal mistakes. Be satisfied, my dear. Let all the single be satisfied with their freedom.”

“You echo my uncle’s words!” exclaimed Caroline, in a tone of dismay. “You speak like Mrs. Yorke in her most gloomy moments, like Miss Mann when she is most sourly and hypochondriacally disposed. This is terrible!”

“No, it is only true. O child, you have only lived the pleasant morning time of life; the hot, weary noon, the sad evening, the sunless night, are yet to come for you. Mr. Helstone, you say, talks as I talk; and I wonder how Mrs. Matthewson Helstone would have talked had she been living. She died! she died!”

“And, alas! my own mother and father⁠—” exclaimed Caroline, struck by a sombre recollection.

“What of them?”

“Did I never tell you that they were separated?”

“I have heard it.”

“They must, then, have been very miserable.”

“You see all facts go to prove what I say.”

“In this case there ought to be no such thing as marriage.”

“There ought, my dear, were it only to prove that this life is a mere state of probation, wherein neither rest nor recompense is to be vouchsafed.”

“But your own marriage, Mrs. Pryor?”

Mrs. Pryor shrank and shuddered as if a rude finger had pressed a naked nerve. Caroline felt she had touched what would not bear the slightest contact.

“My marriage was unhappy,” said the lady, summoning courage at last; “but yet⁠—” She hesitated.

“But yet,” suggested Caroline, “not immitigably wretched?”

“Not in its results, at least. No,” she added, in a softer tone; “God mingles something of the balm of mercy even in vials of the most corrosive woe. He can so turn events that from the very same blind, rash act whence sprang the curse of half our life may flow the blessing of the remainder. Then I am of a peculiar disposition⁠—I own that⁠—far from facile, without address, in some points eccentric. I ought never to have married. Mine is not the nature easily to find a duplicate or likely to assimilate with a contrast. I was quite aware of my own ineligibility; and if I had not been so miserable as a governess, I never should have married; and then⁠—”

Caroline’s eyes asked her to proceed. They entreated her to break the thick cloud of despair which her previous words had seemed to spread over life.

“And then, my dear, Mr.⁠—that is, the gentleman I married⁠—was, perhaps, rather an exceptional than an average character. I hope, at least, the experience of few has been such as mine was, or that few have felt their sufferings as I felt mine. They nearly shook my mind; relief was so hopeless, redress so unattainable. But, my dear, I do not wish to dishearten; I only wish to warn you, and to prove that the single should not be too anxious to change their state, as they may change for the worse.”

“Thank you, my dear madam. I quite understand your kind