第144页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第144页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
address him when needful without grimace- and it increased and grew
kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam. How
will she manage to please him when they are married? I do not think
she will manage it; and yet it might be managed; and his wife might, I
verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun shines on.'
I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Rochester's
project of marrying for interest and connections. It surprised me when
I first discovered that such was his intention: I had thought him a
man unlikely to be influenced by motives so commonplace in his
choice of a wife; but the longer I considered the position, education,
etc., of the parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming
either him or Miss Ingram for acting in conformity to ideas and
principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their childhood. All
their class held these principles: I supposed, then, they had
reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me
that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only
such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the
advantages to the husband's own happiness offered by this plan
convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption
of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world
would act as I wished to act.
But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to
my master: I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once
kept a sharp look-out. It had formerly been my endeavour to study
all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from
the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no
bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me
once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their
presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively
insipid. And as for the vague something- was it a sinister or a
sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression?- that opened upon a
careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before
one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something
which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering
amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground
quiver and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld
still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves.
Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare- to divine it; and I
thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the
abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature.
Meantime, while I thought only of my master and his future bride-
saw only them, heard only their discourse, and considered only their
movements of importance- the rest of the party were occupied with
their own separate interests and pleasures. The Ladies Lynn and Ingram