Meantime, let me ask myself one question--Which is better?--To have
surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful
effort--no struggle;--but to have sunk down in the silken snare;
fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern
clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now
living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love
half my time--for he would--oh, yes, he would have loved me well for
a while. He DID love me--no one will ever love me so again. I
shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and
grace--for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these
charms. He was fond and proud of me--it is what no man besides will
ever be.--But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above
all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a
fool's paradise at Marseilles--fevered with delusive bliss one hour-
-suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next-
-or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy
mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?
Yes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and
law, and scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied
moment. God directed me to a correct choice: I thank His
providence for the guidance!
Having brought my eventide musings to this point, I rose, went to my
door, and looked at the sunset of the harvest-day, and at the quiet
fields before my cottage, which, with the school, was distant half a
mile from the village. The birds were singing their last strains -
"The air was mild, the dew was balm."
While I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find
myself ere long weeping--and why? For the doom which had reft me
from adhesion to my master: for him I was no more to see; for the
desperate grief and fatal fury--consequences of my departure--which
might now, perhaps, be dragging him from the path of right, too far
to leave hope of ultimate restoration thither. At this thought, I
turned my face aside from the lovely sky of eve and lonely vale of
Morton--I say LONELY, for in that bend of it visible to me there was
no building apparent save the church and the parsonage, half-hid in
trees, and, quite at the extremity, the roof of Vale Hall, where the
rich Mr. Oliver and his daughter lived. I hid my eyes, and leant my
head against the stone frame of my door; but soon a slight noise
near the wicket which shut in my tiny garden from the meadow beyond
it made me look up. A dog--old Carlo, Mr. Rivers' pointer, as I saw
in a moment--was pushing the gate with his nose, and St. John
himself leant upon it with folded arms; his brow knit, his gaze,
grave almost to displeasure, fixed on me. I asked him to come in.