I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of
delight it was to his sisters. He expressed once, and but once in
my hearing, a strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an
inborn affection for the dark roof and hoary walls he called his
home; but there was more of gloom than pleasure in the tone and
words in which the sentiment was manifested; and never did he seem
to roam the moors for the sake of their soothing silence--never seek
out or dwell upon the thousand peaceful delights they could yield.
Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an
opportunity of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its calibre
when I heard him preach in his own church at Morton. I wish I could
describe that sermon: but it is past my power. I cannot even
render faithfully the effect it produced on me.
It began calm--and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice
went, it was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly
restrained zeal breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted
the nervous language. This grew to force--compressed, condensed,
controlled. The heart was thrilled, the mind astonished, by the
power of the preacher: neither were softened. Throughout there was
a strange bitterness; an absence of consolatory gentleness; stern
allusions to Calvinistic doctrines--election, predestination,
reprobation--were frequent; and each reference to these points
sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom. When he had done,
instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by his
discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed to
me--I know not whether equally so to others--that the eloquence to
which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid
dregs of disappointment--where moved troubling impulses of insatiate
yearnings and disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John Rivers--
pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was--had not yet found that
peace of God which passeth all understanding: he had no more found
it, I thought, than had I with my concealed and racking regrets for
my broken idol and lost elysium--regrets to which I have latterly
avoided referring, but which possessed me and tyrannised over me
ruthlessly.
Meantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor
House, and return to the far different life and scene which awaited
them, as governesses in a large, fashionable, south-of-England city,
where each held a situation in families by whose wealthy and haughty
members they were regarded only as humble dependants, and who
neither knew nor sought out their innate excellences, and
appreciated only their acquired accomplishments as they appreciated
the skill of their cook or the taste of their waiting-woman. Mr.
St. John had said nothing to me yet about the employment he had
promised to obtain for me; yet it became urgent that I should have a
vocation of some kind. One morning, being left alone with him a few
minutes in the parlour, I ventured to approach the window-recess--
which his table, chair, and desk consecrated as a kind of study--and
I was going to speak, though not very well knowing in what words to
frame my inquiry--for it is at all times difficult to break the ice
of reserve glassing over such natures as his--when he saved me the
trouble by being the first to commence a dialogue.