"Very willingly," he rejoined; and rising, he strode a little
distance up the pass, threw himself down on a swell of heath, and
there lay still.
"I CAN do what he wants me to do: I am forced to see and
acknowledge that," I meditated,--"that is, if life be spared me.
But I feel mine is not the existence to be long protracted under an
Indian sun. What then? He does not care for that: when my time
came to die, he would resign me, in all serenity and sanctity, to
the God who gave me. The case is very plain before me. In leaving
England, I should leave a loved but empty land--Mr. Rochester is not
there; and if he were, what is, what can that ever be to me? My
business is to live without him now: nothing so absurd, so weak as
to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting some impossible
change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him. Of course
(as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life to
replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly
the most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its
noble cares and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the
void left by uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I
must say, Yes--and yet I shudder. Alas! If I join St. John, I
abandon half myself: if I go to India, I go to premature death.
And how will the interval between leaving England for India, and
India for the grave, be filled? Oh, I know well! That, too, is
very clear to my vision. By straining to satisfy St. John till my
sinews ache, I SHALL satisfy him--to the finest central point and
farthest outward circle of his expectations. If I DO go with him--
if I DO make the sacrifice he urges, I will make it absolutely: I
will throw all on the altar--heart, vitals, the entire victim. He
will never love me; but he shall approve me; I will show him
energies he has not yet seen, resources he has never suspected.
Yes, I can work as hard as he can, and with as little grudging.
"Consent, then, to his demand is possible: but for one item--one
dreadful item. It is--that he asks me to be his wife, and has no
more of a husband's heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock,
down which the stream is foaming in yonder gorge. He prizes me as a
soldier would a good weapon; and that is all. Unmarried to him,
this would never grieve me; but can I let him complete his
calculations--coolly put into practice his plans--go through the
wedding ceremony? Can I receive from him the bridal ring, endure
all the forms of love (which I doubt not he would scrupulously
observe) and know that the spirit was quite absent? Can I bear the
consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a sacrifice made
on principle? No: such a martyrdom would be monstrous. I will
never undergo it. As his sister, I might accompany him--not as his
wife: I will tell him so."