University of Virginia Library

33. CHAPTER XXXIII.
DRAWN UNDER.

Miss Eyre was an enigma; to Richard, certainly, and to
many who may be inclined to bestow a thought upon her.
She was of the somewhat numerous family of Eyres, — of
an obscure branch, indeed. When she was quite young, she
demonstrated the superiority of her sex by romping with the
boys. As if she had early imbibed exalted notions of
womanhood, she once undertook to break a colt. But she
had no Family, no Church, no School. Her tendencies,
whether good or evil, were unsoothed by affection,
unmoulded by religion, unrefined by culture. Her manner
in the present instance was contradictory, and her intention
uncertain. She deigned no explanation herself, and we
might be balked to attempt one for her.

In five minutes after Richard left, the girls dashed into
the room; and she was jocose, talkative as ever, and rattled
away with the merriest of them, — all traces of concern
having vanished, and her look as bright as if she had
just washed in a sunbeam.

Richard did not recover so easily, — indeed his power of
elasticity seemed for the moment destroyed. To rise from
the blow he had received, was an attainment in his own
estimation impossible. He was naturally of heavier mould
than Miss Eyre; — such, at least, would be a reasonable
deduction from the facts of the case.

He did not mention what had befallen to his sister, or to
any one. He bore the burden alone.

Alone? Richard was, or professed to be, a Christian; and,
like his Master, he might still have the Father with him.

He disburthened his heart to God; — he poured the anguish
of his spirit into the ear of Heaven. Like a captive,
he lifted his galled hands, and implored Divine mercy and
love to strike off the chains. He listened to the starry
night, that some voice from dimmest ethereal space might
speak to his troubled soul, saying, Peace, be still!

Had he sinned? This thought shot like a lightning
gleam through his brain. His conduct, as in a mirage, rose
in sudden, pictorial, prolonged prospective to his view.
Many things wore a sinful aspect. An affrighted imagination
would readily detect many sinful spots. He cried out,
with tenderest contrition, “God be merciful to me a sinner!”

But the worst was yet to come, if there could be any
worse, where the desolation was so entire.

He did not go near the Governor's again. He could
have no further communications with Mrs. Melbourne. His
heart failed him at the thought of seeing her. Melicent
was absent. What on her return? He did not write her.
A letter he had from her remained in his desk, unopened.

What would the Governor say, and Madam, and Barbara,
or Chassford, or Glendar, or —; but why go over the
series of interested persons, or conjure among possible
events the recollection of any one of which pierced him so
vitally?

Not many days afterwards, Melicent returned. The Governor's
consequence in town rendered his movements matter
of public rumor, and in this way Richard ascertained what
by direct inquiry he might not have put himself upon finding
out. He realized what was before him, and waited the
progress of events, and the course of the hours, silently and
awfully, as Alcestis did the unfoldings of Fate.

It came, — came like a thunderbolt which one expects;
bowed, tense, hot, and almost shrinking, in the suffocating
silence, and dismal darkness, he hardly dare open his eyes,
lest he should see himself struck. The house shook, and
his sight reeled, and he knew it had come. It came in the
shape of a note from Mrs. Melbourne, covering one from
Melicent.

Mrs. Melbourne flashed thus. “I will not accuse you,
since your own conscience must have done that office for
you. I shall pray for you, that God would lead you to
repentance, and that you may be saved at last. It is unnecessary
to remind you of the distress you have occasioned
us, as I fear you are incapable of feeling it. The purpose
of this present is answered when I inform you that your
visits here are interdicted. Melicent, poor child, whose happiness
you have so rudely and vulgarly assailed, will give
the dismissal under her own hand.”

If Melicent flashed, she rained, too; and her flash showed
rather a confused state of the elements above, — rapid condensation
of vapors, meeting of adverse winds, — than an
attempt to injure anything below.

Her note had evidently commenced with “Dear Richard,”
and “Dear Sir” was the cover of a blot. And this little
incident characterized the entire manuscript. She was in
doubt what to write; — whether to regard Richard in the
light of conscious rascality, or of scandalized innocence. If
she thought that a tender word would be exposed to barbarous
insolence, she more deeply feared that severe words
would pierce to the quick a virtuous sorrow. So Richard
passed before her imagination like the changing Spectre of
the Brocken, — assuming a new phase of terror, or of beauty,
according to the fluctuating mood of her own mind. She
did say, “I shall delay, — not my decision, for I have none,

but my feelings, — as to which I know not what to have. In
my present course, I must be governed by others, who have
always led me wisely and well, and to whom I have loved
to render obedience. It is well that it is so, for at this moment
I am incapable of directing my own steps. I thank you
for your information respecting Glendar, since I persuade
myself it was truthfully spoken and generously intended.
I need not say that my instincts had presaged what your
observation announced. I pray God to have mercy upon
you, and upon me; — if you have done wrong, that you may
sincerely repent, — if you have done right, that you may be
vindicated; — if I am in the way of truth, that I may have
strength to support the heavy blow, — if I am in error, that
my eyes may be speedily opened. The excitement of our
family is at present too considerable for deliberation, and too
exacting for candor. I have but one alternative, — to listen
and be silent, or to discuss and despair.”

After all, “our family” must be construed as a figure of
speech, or a natural trope of feeling, and, primarily, denoting
Mrs. Melbourne. The Governor said nothing, though he
looked a good deal. Madam vented her surprise and sorrow
in a brief ejaculation, which she capped with a passage
of Scripture. Barbara knew not what to say. Cousin Rowena
became very serious. Mrs. Melbourne, as she preöccupied
the ground, likewise preöccupied all judgments. She
had seen Miss Eyre, and she knew what was what. She
had the power of raising a breeze in the family, and obliging
its members either to scud under bare poles, or to haul
to. Then Glendar was sorely, and as she thought, honestly
thought, wickedly involved. Then it was a grave and a
dark matter. What could be done but acquiesce in Mrs.
Melbourne's foregone conclusion, that Richard be interdicted

the house. “But,” added Madam, “to everything there is
a time and a judgment.”

Richard might have gone to the Governor's, and applied
tongue and person to dissipate the gloom and perplexity that
rumor and speculation threw over the subject. He might
have cast his own consciousness at the feet of Melicent, and
said, “That is my vindication!”

But he was unused to extremities, — he had had but little
taste heretofore of what are called the trials of life. He had
fortitude for distress, and boldness in danger. He lacked
that rashness — sometimes a virtue — which loves a fiery
peril, and possessed no dexterity adapted to the subtile and
nice points of a dilemma.

More than this, — between Richard and the Governor's
Family was a Brocken Spectre too, dilating in portentous
dimension, and guarding the passage with audacious and
shadowy arms. That was Miss Eyre, and Miss Eyre's
assumed wrongs, and her real distress, and his own unexplainable
complicity therewith. He could not banish her
image, or dispossess himself of her impression and power.
She had got into his imagination, and like a vessel in distress,
she seemed to be stranded in his heart.

Now, furthermore, he must prepare himself for the afterclap.
What had befallen must become public. Roxy must
know it, and it would kill her; Munk must know it, and it
would be a damper to his pleasant feelings; and Memmy
and Bebby must know it, and they would be sorry. The
“World” must know it; and how rejoiced it would be at this
addition to its Cabinet of Entertaining Knowledge, — how
wise it would become all at once, — how exceedingly endowed,
— how sparkling and brilliant! Richard's valued
friends would hear of it, — Mr. Gouch and Silver, Mangil and
Nefon, Mysie and Chuk. The Church would have to consider

of it, and “Knuckle Lane!” What would Mrs. Tunny
say? There was Clover to be elated, Miss Fiddledeeana
Redfern to sneer, and Mrs. Mellow to deduce a solemn improvement.
Aunt Grint had already been foretold it.

And Aunt Grint was the first to break it to Willow Croft.
“What has happened?” she exclaimed, panting and staring;
“my wrists ached Saturday, in the afternoon, and
there must be a storm. I met Mrs. Tunny, and she was in
the greatest state of mind. Mrs. Quiddy, who is hauled
up with rheumatis, came out to ask me. Do be quiet,
children! — pity sakes! what a noise! one can't hear one's
self speak!”

“What has happened?” cried Roxy, amazed.

“I worked as tight as I could spring to come down. I
had n't no more idea of it than nothing at all, if it had n't
been for running out to hear a woodpecker; then I knew
there was a rotten tree somewhere, — I knew it before Mr.
Gouch passed the house.”

“What is it?” emphasized Roxy.

“Don't you know,” replied Aunt Grint, “that that Miss
Dennington —”

“She is n't dead!” screamed Roxy.

“No, indeed!”

“Nor taken the cholera?”

“Only think!” Aunt Grint's loud and masculine voice
sank to an unnatural susurration. “She has turned off
Richard; the engagement is broke up. I might have seen
it. The spider, — 't was when I was sewing with my basket
on the table, and Sally a-sweeping the floor, — the crittur
never come nigh, but kept edging round. I told Sally we
should n't have a wedding gown —”

Roxy, meanwhile, let fall the bellows that she had been
trying for five minutes to hang up; she suffered the milk to

boil over on the coals; she did not prevent Bebby going to
the sugar-bucket in the closet, — three things that she had not
done or forborne to do, before, all her life. She attempted to
listen; but her ear was clearer than her mind; — or, as is
said of the telegraph wires, the auditory nerve was down
somewhere. Sundry exclamations, however, indicated that
she was alarmed, while her rushing to seize Bebby showed
that, if her feelings could find vent somewhere, she might
be calm and self-possessed. She quietly washed the child's
hands, and sat down with her in the little rocking-chair.
She asked Aunt Grint but one question, the reply to which
removed the necessity of all further communications touching
the credibility of the information she had characteristically
but crookedly conveyed, and was still. She was very
still, and calm, and motionless; so much so, the child looked
into her face, as if something was the matter. She stroked
the child's sunny locks.

Presently Richard came in. He perceived the condition
of things. He was composed, but a little flushed; his lip
quivered, and his voice was tremulous; — yet a smile shot
up through his face, — a sort of Zodiacal Light, through
which might be seen the gray infinitude of his sorrow,
beneath which the sun of his hope had set, while in the
still vault around burned the stars of pure feeling, like vestal
lamps, that burned on only because it was in their destiny
never to go out.

Roxy said nothing; she looked at Richard, and instantly
her gaze was stricken to the floor. She rose, set the child
deliberately on its feet, went to her brother, threw her arms
about his neck, and they both wept.

Aunt Grint trotted her heel on the floor, drummed the
window-sill with her finger, took the boiling milk from the
coals, and went away.

It was a great sorrow to Roxy, and a real one. There
was body to it. The petty annoyances, and transient disagreements,
that ruffled so many of her hours, were drowned
out by this profound woe; — or, to change the metaphor, as
a heavy rain arrests the agitation of waves, and smooths
the surface of the sea, this pouring event restored the uniformity
of her spirits, and filled her with serene thoughtfulness.
She seemed to comprehend the extent of the
calamity of her brother, and, as by some inspiration, to take
a sense of the mischief secretly working at the centre of it,
and she rose to the height of the evil that so suddenly
unfolded before her.

In sympathizing with her brother, Roxy lost much of her
petulancy and caprice, and ingenuous concern for real suffering
supplanted a morbid nettlesomeness to fancied evils.

Richard could but confirm to his sister what Aunt Grint
had stated as to his separation from Melicent. He did not,
however, feel at liberty to discuss all the causes that may
have led to it; nor did he allude to the probable agency of
Miss Eyre in the affair.

But Roxy, whose keenness of penetration exceeded Richard's
wise reserve, said, in a knowing way, “Has Plumy
Alicia anything to do with it?” Richard assented, by trying
to be silent. “I will not press an answer,” said Roxy.
Now Richard nodded and added, “I do not wish to speak
of that; I cannot.” His sister replied, “I understand it; I
think I do. I recall many things at this moment that have
a bearing upon it. I will be silent as long as you wish me
to be.”

“You are not dead?” said Richard.

“How you talk!”

“I thought it would kill you.”

“You banter me,” answered Roxy. “I have been so

often at the point of death upon little things, this great
thing may restore me to life.”

This remark of Roxy's, generalized into a trait of character,
is not without distinguished precedent. Great Henry
of France “was less than a woman in a coach, and cried
out whenever it appeared likely to overturn, and betrayed
the utmost timidity. But in the field he was brave even to
intrepidity, and accustomed to regard death in the ranks of
war with the highest composure.”