But destiny, in the shape of the Rev. Mr. Nasmyth, came between me and
Miss Temple: I saw her in her travelling dress step into a post-chaise,
shortly after the marriage ceremony; I watched the chaise mount the hill
and disappear beyond its brow; and then retired to my own room, and there
spent in solitude the greatest part of the half-holiday granted in honour
of the occasion.
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I walked about the chamber most of the time. I imagined myself only to
be regretting my loss, and thinking how to repair it; but when my
reflections were concluded, and I looked up and found that the afternoon
was gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery dawned on me,
namely, that in the interval I had undergone a transforming process; that
my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple--or rather that
she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been breathing in her
vicinity--and that now I was left in my natural element, and beginning to
feel the stirring of old emotions. It did not seem as if a prop were
withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone: it was not the power to
be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquillity was no
more. My world had for some years been in Lowood: my experience had been
of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide,
and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and
excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse,
to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.
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