23. CHAPTER XXIII.
WE DO NOT KNOW
What is before us; and Richard did not know what was
before him. Yet Miss Plumy Alicia Eyre was before
Richard; her dark, thrilling eye was before him; her pale,
pensive, earnest face was before him; so was her searching,
pleading, piteous heart. But did Richard really know what
was before him? Was not the future hidden from him, and
was not the present even partially veiled?
But with his body's eye he only saw Miss Eyre; and
with his mind's eye, if he had striven to look another way
he could not, for she tyrannized over that too.
Miss Eyre was intimate at Munk's, and she brought fruit
and candies to the children. Moreover, Richard had been
sick two or three days, and Miss Eyre frequently called,
exhibiting the gentlest sympathy. She brought cordials to
his bed-side; she spelled Roxy in the kitchen, while she
watched with her brother.
But Miss Eyre, as these pages have had occasion to
record, was unsphered, unhomed. In this she was to be
pitied.
Moreover, she lacked a contented mind; she would not
submit to the orderings of Providence, or the inevitabilities
of fortune. She was too ambitious to be useful; too confident
to be wise; too bad to be good. She was too reckless
either to improve advantage or support evil. Here she
was to blame.
A little true humility, — even common candor of feeling,
— a grain of piety, would have saved her from the agitation
she was in, and the extremity to which she was tending.
Even now, Miss Eyre, with all that you have suffered
still burdening your memory, with all the lacerations of
sorrow yet fresh in your heart, may we not ask you if you
ought not to have been more considerate, — if some suggestions
of reason, humanity or religion, ought not to have restrained
you? Do not lay all the blame on others, but ask
your own soul if you can fully justify yourself.
Plumy Alicia appealed to the sympathies of Richard; she
thrilled every commiserant fibre within him; her anguish,
like a troubled wave, beat upon him, her description of herself
awakened his tenderness, while with consummate nicety
she concealed her design to do so. Her ministry to Richard
when he was sick, she knew, had established a place for her
in his gratitude; she had imparted some intimate matters to
him, — a movement which, while it secures confidence, inspires
self-esteem. She laid her hand upon his; he could not
repudiate the familiarity, because by that act she seemed to
be discharging upon one stronger than herself a load of
sensation too heavy for her to bear. She looked into his
eye, but only to assure him how sad and heavy her own
was.
“Do not say that you love me,” she said; “I do not wish
you to say that;” — she did wish it, nevertheless. “Kiss
me, and I go, — go with one assurance of friendship and
happiness, which, if it be all that is allowed me, will be a
precious keepsake forever.” She said this with her warm
breath pulsating on his face.
