nsuous
excitement, with lapses and reactions, but as a great and holy mystery
of devotion and service and mutual help. She too had her little taste
of love. Mr. Nicholls, her father's curate, a man of deep tenderness
behind his quiet homely ways, had proposed to her; she had refused him;
but his suffering and bewilderment had touched her deeply, and at last
she consented, though she went to her wedding in fear and dread; but
she was rewarded, and for a few short months tasted a calm and sweet
happiness, the joy of being needed and desired, and at the same time
guarded and tended well. Her pathetic words, when she knew from his
lips that she must die, "God will not part us--we have been so happy,"
are full of the deepest tragedy.

I say again that I know of no instance among the most intimate records
of the human heart, in which life was faced with such splendid courage
as it was by Charlotte Bronte. It contained so many things which she
desired--art, beauty, thought, peace, deep and tender relations, and
the supreme crown of love. But she never dreamed of trying to escape or
shirk her lot. After her first great success with Jane Eyre, she might
have lived life on her own lines; her writing meant wealth to one of
her simple tastes; and as her closest friend said, if she had chosen to
set up a house of her own, she would have been gratefully thanked for
any kindness she might have shown to her household, instead of being,
as she was, ruthlessly employed and even tyrannised over. Consider how
a young authoress, with that splendid success to her credit, would
nowadays be made much of and tended, begged to consult her own wishes
and make, her own arrangements. But Charlotte Bronte hated notoriety,
and took her fame with a shrinking and modest amazement. She never gave
herself airs, or displayed any affectation, or caught at any flattery.
She just went back to her tragic home, and carried the burden of
housekeeping on her frail shoulders. The simplicity, the delicacy, the
humility of it all is above praise. If ever there was a human being who
might have pleaded to be excused from any gallant battling with life
because of her bleak, comfortless, unhappy surroundings, and her own
sensitive temperament, it was Charlotte Bronte. But instead of that she
fought silently with disaster and unhappiness, neither pitying herself
for her destiny, nor taking the smallest credit for her tough
resistance. It does not necessarily prove that