Jane eyre

"How well you read me, you witch!" interposed Mr. Rochester: "but
what did you find in the veil besides its embroidery? Did you find
poison, or a dagger, that you look so mournful now?"
"No, no, sir; besides the delicacy and richness of the fabric, I
found nothing save Fairfax Rochester's pride; and that did not scare
me, because I am used to the sight of the demon. But, sir, as it
grew dark, the wind rose: it blew yesterday evening, not as it
blows now--wild and high--but 'with a sullen, moaning sound' far
more eerie. I wished you were at home. I came into this room, and
the sight of the empty chair and fireless hearth chilled me. For
some time after I went to bed, I could not sleep--a sense of anxious
excitement distressed me. The gale still rising, seemed to my ear
to muffle a mournful under-sound; whether in the house or abroad I
could not at first tell, but it recurred, doubtful yet doleful at
every lull; at last I made out it must be some dog howling at a
distance. I was glad when it ceased. On sleeping, I continued in
dreams the idea of a dark and gusty night. I continued also the
wish to be with you, and experienced a strange, regretful
consciousness of some barrier dividing us. During all my first
sleep, I was following the windings of an unknown road; total
obscurity environed me; rain pelted me; I was burdened with the
charge of a little child: a very small creature, too young and
feeble to walk, and which shivered in my cold arms, and wailed
piteously in my ear. I thought, sir, that you were on the road a
long way before me; and I strained every nerve to overtake you, and
made effort on effort to utter your name and entreat you to stop--
but my movements were fettered, and my voice still died away
inarticulate; while you, I felt, withdrew farther and farther every
moment."
"And these dreams weigh on your spirits now, Jane, when I am close
to you? Little nervous subject! Forget visionary woe, and think
only of real happiness! You say you love me, Janet: yes--I will
not forget that; and you cannot deny it. THOSE words did not die
inarticulate on your lips. I heard them clear and soft: a thought
too solemn perhaps, but sweet as music--'I think it is a glorious
thing to have the hope of living with you, Edward, because I love
you.' Do you love me, Jane?--repeat it."
"I do, sir--I do, with my whole heart."
"Well," he said, after some minutes' silence, "it is strange; but
that sentence has penetrated by breast painfully. Why? I think
because you said it with such an earnest, religious energy, and
because your upward gaze at me now is the very sublime of faith,
truth, and devotion: it is too much as if some spirit were near me.
Look wicked, Jane: as you know well how to look: coin one of your
wild, shy, provoking smiles; tell me you hate me--tease me, vex me;
do anything but move me: I would rather be incensed than saddened."
"I will tease you and vex you to your heart's content, when I have
finished my tale: but hear me to the end."
"I thought, Jane, you had told me all. I thought I had found the
source of your melancholy in a dream."
I shook my head. "What! is there more? But I will not believe it
to be anything important. I warn you of incredulity beforehand. Go
on."
The disquietude of his air, the somewhat apprehensive impatience of
his manner, surprised me: but I proceeded.
"I dreamt another dream, sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary
ruin, the retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the
stately front nothing remained but a shell-like wall, very high and
very fragile-looking. I wandered, on a moonlight night, through the
grass-grown enclosure within: here I stumbled over a marble hearth,
and there over a fallen fragment of cornice. Wrapped up in a shawl,
I still carried the unknown little child: I might not lay it down
anywhere, however tired were my arms--however much its weight
impeded my progress, I must retain it. I heard the gallop of a
horse at a distance on the road; I was sure it was you; and you were
departing for many years and for a distant country. I climbed the
thin wall with frantic perilous haste, eager to catch one glimpse of
you from the top: the stones rolled from under my feet, the ivy
branches I grasped gave way, the child clung round my neck in
terror, and almost strangled me; at last I gained the summit. I saw
you like a speck on a white track, lessening every moment. The
blast blew so strong I could not stand. I sat down on the narrow
ledge; I hushed the scared infant in my lap: you turned an angle of
the road: I bent forward to take a last look; the wall crumbled; I
was shaken; the child rolled from my knee, I lost my balance, fell,
and woke."
"Now, Jane, that is all."
"All the preface, sir; the tale is yet to come. On waking, a gleam
dazzled my eyes; I thought--Oh, it is daylight! But I was mistaken;
it was only candlelight. Sophie, I supposed, had come in. There
was a light in the dressing-table, and the door of the closet,
where, before going to bed, I had hung my wedding-dress and veil,
stood open; I heard a rustling there. I asked, 'Sophie, what are
you doing?' No one answered; but a form emerged from the closet; it
took the light, held it aloft, and surveyed the garments pendent
from the portmanteau. 'Sophie! Sophie!' I again cried: and still
it was silent. I had risen up in bed, I bent forward: first
surprise, then bewilderment, came over me; and then my blood crept
cold through my veins. Mr. Rochester, this was not Sophie, it was
not Leah, it was not Mrs. Fairfax: it was not--no, I was sure of
it, and am still--it was not even that strange woman, Grace Poole."
"It must have been one of them," interrupted my master.
"No, sir, I solemnly assure you to the contrary. The shape standing
before me had never crossed my eyes within the precincts of
Thornfield Hall before; the height, the contour were new to me."
"Describe it, Jane."
"It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair
hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it
was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot
tell."
"Did you see her face?"
"Not at first. But presently she took my veil from its place; she
held it up, gazed at it long, and then she threw it over her own
head, and turned to the mirror. At that moment I saw the reflection
of the visage and features quite distinctly in the dark oblong
glass."
"And how were they?"
"Fearful and ghastly to me--oh, sir, I never saw a face like it! It
was a discoloured face--it was a savage face. I wish I could forget
the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the
lineaments!"
"Ghosts are usually pale, Jane."
"This, sir, was purple: the lips were swelled and dark; the brow
furrowed: the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes.
Shall I tell you of what it reminded me?"
"You may."
"Of the foul German spectre--the Vampyre."
"Ah!--what did it do?"
"Sir, it removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts,
and flinging both on the floor, trampled on them."
"Afterwards?"
"It drew aside the window-curtain and looked out; perhaps it saw
dawn approaching, for, taking the candle, it retreated to the door.
Just at my bedside, the figure stopped: the fiery eyes glared upon
me--she thrust up her candle close to my face, and extinguished it
under my eyes. I was aware her lurid visage flamed over mine, and I
lost consciousness: for the second time in my life--only the second
time--I became insensible from terror."
"Who was with you when you revived?"
"No one, sir, but the broad day. I rose, bathed my head and face in
water, drank a long draught; felt that though enfeebled I was not
ill, and determined that to none but you would I impart this vision.
Now, sir, tell me who and what that woman was?"
"The creature of an over-stimulated brain; that is certain. I must
be careful of you, my treasure: nerves like yours were not made for
rough handling."
"Sir, depend on it, my nerves were not in fault; the thing was real:
the transaction actually took place."
"And your previous dreams, were they real too? Is Thornfield Hall a
ruin? Am I severed from you by insuperable obstacles? Am I leaving
you without a tear--without a kiss--without a word?"
"Not yet."
"Am I about to do it? Why, the day is already commenced which is to
bind us indissolubly; and when we are once united, there shall be no
recurrence of these mental terrors: I guarantee that."
"Mental terrors, sir! I wish I could believe them to be only such:
I wish it more now than ever; since even you cannot explain to me
the mystery of that awful visitant."
"And since I cannot do it, Jane, it must have been unreal."
"But, sir, when I said so to myself on rising this morning, and when
I looked round the room to gather courage and comfort from the
cheerful aspect of each familiar object in full daylight, there--on
the carpet--I saw what gave the distinct lie to my hypothesis,--the
veil, torn from top to bottom in two halves!"
I felt Mr. Rochester start and shudder; he hastily flung his arms
round me. "Thank God!" he exclaimed, "that if anything malignant
did come near you last night, it was only the veil that was harmed.
Oh, to think what might have happened!"
He drew his breath short, and strained me so close to him, I could
scarcely pant. After some minutes' silence, he continued, cheerily
-
"Now, Janet, I'll explain to you all about it. It was half dream,
half reality. A woman did, I doubt not, enter your room: and that
woman was--must have been--Grace Poole. You call her a strange
being yourself: from all you know, you have reason so to call her--
what did she do to me? what to Mason? In a state between sleeping
and waking, you noticed her entrance and her actions; but feverish,
almost delirious as you were, you ascribed to her a goblin
appearance different from her own: the long dishevelled hair, the
swelled black face, the exaggerated stature, were figments of
imagination; results of nightmare: the spiteful tearing of the veil
was real: and it is like her. I see you would ask why I keep such
a woman in my house: when we have been married a year and a day, I
will tell you; but not now. Are you satisfied, Jane? Do you accept
my solution of the mystery?"
I reflected, and in truth it appeared to me the only possible one:
satisfied I was not, but to please him I endeavoured to appear so--
relieved, I certainly did feel; so I answered him with a contented
smile. And now, as it was long past one, I prepared to leave him.
"Does not Sophie sleep with Adele in the nursery?" he asked, as I
lit my candle.
"Yes, sir."
"And there is room enough in Adele's little bed for you. You must
share it with her to-night, Jane: it is no wonder that the incident
you have related should make you nervous, and I would rather you did
not sleep alone: promise me to go to the nursery."
"I shall be very glad to do so, sir."
"And fasten the door securely on the inside. Wake Sophie when you
go upstairs, under pretence of requesting her to rouse you in good
time to-morrow; for you must be dressed and have finished breakfast
before eight. And now, no more sombre thoughts: chase dull care
away, Janet. Don't you hear to what soft whispers the wind has
fallen? and there is no more beating of rain against the window-
panes: look here" (he lifted up the curtain)--"it is a lovely
night!"
It was. Half heaven was pure and stainless: the clouds, now
trooping before the wind, which had shifted to the west, were filing
off eastward in long, silvered columns. The moon shone peacefully.
"Well," said Mr. Rochester, gazing inquiringly into my eyes, "how is
my Janet now?"
"The night is serene, sir; and so am I."
"And you will not dream of separation and sorrow to-night; but of
happy love and blissful union."
This prediction was but half fulfilled: I did not indeed dream of
sorrow, but as little did I dream of joy; for I never slept at all.
With little Adele in my arms, I watched the slumber of childhood--so
tranquil, so passionless, so innocent--and waited for the coming
day: all my life was awake and astir in my frame: and as soon as
the sun rose I rose too. I remember Adele clung to me as I left
her: I remember I kissed her as I loosened her little hands from my
neck; and I cried over her with strange emotion, and quitted her
because I feared my sobs would break her still sound repose. She
seemed the emblem of my past life; and he I was now to array myself
to meet, the dread, but adored, type of my unknown future day.
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CHAPTER XXVI
Sophie came at seven to dress me: she was very long indeed in
accomplishing her task; so long that Mr. Rochester, grown, I
suppose, impatient of my delay, sent up to ask why I did not come.
She was just fastening my veil (the plain square of blond after all)
to my hair with a brooch; I hurried from under her hands as soon as
I could.
"Stop!" she cried in French. "Look at yourself in the mirror: you
have not taken one peep."
So I turned at the door: I saw a robed and veiled figure, so unlike
my usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger.
"Jane!" called a voice, and I hastened down. I was received at the
foot of the stairs by Mr. Rochester.
"Lingerer!" he said, "my brain is on fire with impatience, and you
tarry so long!"
He took me into the dining-room, surveyed me keenly all over,
pronounced me "fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life,
but the desire of his eyes," and then telling me he would give me
but ten minutes to eat some breakfast, he rang the bell. One of his
lately hired servants, a footman, answered it.
"Is John getting the carriage ready?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is the luggage brought down?"
"They are bringing it down, sir."
"Go you to the church: see if Mr. Wood (the clergyman) and the
clerk are there: return and tell me."
The church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates; the
footman soon returned.
"Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice."
"And the carriage?"
"The horses are harnessing."
"We shall not want it to go to church; but it must be ready the
moment we return: all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped
on, and the coachman in his seat."
"Yes, sir."
"Jane, are you ready?"
I rose. There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to
wait for or marshal: none but Mr. Rochester and I. Mrs. Fairfax
stood in the hall as we passed. I would fain have spoken to her,
but my hand was held by a grasp of iron: I was hurried along by a
stride I could hardly follow; and to look at Mr. Rochester's face
was to feel that not a second of delay would be tolerated for any
purpose. I wonder what other bridegroom ever looked as he did--so
bent up to a purpose, so grimly resolute: or who, under such
steadfast brows, ever revealed such flaming and flashing eyes.
I know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the
drive, I gazed neither on sky nor earth: my heart was with my eyes;
and both seemed migrated into Mr. Rochester's frame. I wanted to
see the invisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to
fasten a glance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel the thoughts
whose force he seemed breasting and resisting.
At the churchyard wicket he stopped: he discovered I was quite out
of breath. "Am I cruel in my love?" he said. "Delay an instant:
lean on me, Jane."
And now I can recall the picture of the grey old house of God rising
calm before me, of a rook wheeling round the steeple, of a ruddy
morning sky beyond. I remember something, too, of the green grave-
mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of strangers
straying amongst the low hillocks and reading the mementoes graven
on the few mossy head-stones. I noticed them, because, as they saw
us, they passed round to the back of the church; and I doubted not
they were going to enter by the side-aisle door and witness the
ceremony. By Mr. Rochester they were not observed; he was earnestly
looking at my face from which the blood had, I daresay, momentarily
fled: for I felt my forehead dewy, and my cheeks and lips cold.
When I rallied, which I soon did, he walked gently with me up the
path to the porch.
We entered the quiet and humble temple; the priest waited in his
white surplice at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him. All was
still: two shadows only moved in a remote corner. My conjecture
had been correct: the strangers had slipped in before us, and they
now stood by the vault of the Rochesters, their backs towards us,
viewing through the rails the old time-stained marble tomb, where a
kneeling angel guarded the remains of Damer de Rochester, slain at
Marston Moor in the time of the civil wars, and of Elizabeth, his
wife.
Our place was taken at the communion rails. Hearing a cautious step
behind me, I glanced over my shoulder: one of the strangers--a
gentleman, evidently--was advancing up the chancel. The service
began. The explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone through;
and then the clergyman came a step further forward, and, bending
slightly towards Mr. Rochester, went on.
"I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful
day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed),
that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be
joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well
assured that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's
Word doth allow, are not joined together by God, neither is their
matrimony lawful."
He paused, as the custom is. When is the pause after that sentence
ever broken by reply? Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years. And
the clergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his book, and had
held his breath but for a moment, was proceeding: his hand was
already stretched towards Mr. Rochester, as his lips unclosed to
ask, "Wilt thou have this woman for thy wedded wife?"--when a
distinct and near voice said -
"The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an
impediment."
The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute; the clerk did
the same; Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had
rolled under his feet: taking a firmer footing, and not turning his
head or eyes, he said, "Proceed."
Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with deep but
low intonation. Presently Mr. Wood said -
"I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been
asserted, and evidence of its truth or falsehood."
"The ceremony is quite broken off," subjoined the voice behind us.
"I am in a con***ion to prove my allegation: an insuperable
impediment to this marriage exists."
Mr. Rochester heard, but heeded not: he stood stubborn and rigid,
making no movement but to possess himself of my hand. What a hot
and strong grasp he had! and how like quarried marble was his pale,
firm, massive front at this moment! How his eye shone, still
watchful, and yet wild beneath!
Mr. Wood seemed at a loss. "What is the nature of the impediment?"
he asked. "Perhaps it may be got over--explained away?"
"Hardly," was the answer. "I have called it insuperable, and I
speak advisedly."
The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails. He continued,
uttering each word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not loudly -
"It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage. Mr.
Rochester has a wife now living."
My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never
vibrated to thunder--my blood felt their subtle violence as it had
never felt frost or fire; but I was collected, and in no danger of
swooning. I looked at Mr. Rochester: I made him look at me. His
whole face was colourless rock: his eye was both spark and flint.
He disavowed nothing: he seemed as if he would defy all things.
Without speaking, without smiling, without seeming to recognise in
me a human being, he only twined my waist with his arm and riveted
me to his side.
"Who are you?" he asked of the intruder.
"My name is Briggs, a solicitor of--Street, London."
"And you would thrust on me a wife?"
"I would remind you of your lady's existence, sir, which the law
recognises, if you do not."
"Favour me with an account of her--with her name, her parentage, her
place of abode."
"Certainly." Mr. Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket, and
read out in a sort of official, nasal voice:-
"'I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October A.D.--(a date
of fifteen years back), Edward Fairfax Rochester, of Thornfield
Hall, in the county of -, and of Ferndean Manor, in -shire, England,
was married to my sister, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of Jonas
Mason, merchant, and of Antoinetta his wife, a Creole, at--church,
Spanish Town, Jamaica. The record of the marriage will be found in
the register of that church--a copy of it is now in my possession.
Signed, Richard Mason.'"
"That--if a genuine document--may prove I have been married, but it
does not prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is still
living."
"She was living three months ago," returned the lawyer.
"How do you know?"
"I have a witness to the fact, whose testimony even you, sir, will
scarcely controvert."
"Produce him--or go to hell."
"I will produce him first--he is on the spot. Mr. Mason, have the
goodness to step forward."
Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth; he experienced,
too, a sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I
felt the spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his
frame. The second stranger, who had hitherto lingered in the
background, now drew near; a pale face looked over the solicitor's
shoulder--yes, it was Mason himself. Mr. Rochester turned and
glared at him. His eye, as I have often said, was a black eye: it
had now a tawny, nay, a bloody light in its gloom; and his face
flushed--olive cheek and hueless forehead received a glow as from
spreading, ascending heart-fire: and he stirred, lifted his strong
arm--he could have struck Mason, dashed him on the church-floor,
shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his body--but Mason shrank
away, and cried faintly, "Good God!" Contempt fell cool on Mr.
Rochester--his passion died as if a blight had shrivelled it up: he
only asked--"What have YOU to say?"
An inaudible reply escaped Mason's white lips.
"The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly. I again
demand, what have you to say?"
"Sir--sir," interrupted the clergyman, "do not forget you are in a
sacred place." Then addressing Mason, he inquired gently, "Are you
aware, sir, whether or not this gentleman's wife is still living?"
"Courage," urged the lawyer,--"speak out."
"She is now living at Thornfield Hall," said Mason, in more
articulate tones: "I saw her there last April. I am her brother."
"At Thornfield Hall!" ejaculated the clergyman. "Impossible! I am
an old resident in this neighbourhood, sir, and I never heard of a
Mrs. Rochester at Thornfield Hall."
I saw a grim smile contort Mr. Rochester's lips, and he muttered -
"No, by God! I took care that none should hear of it--or of her
under that name." He mused--for ten minutes he held counsel with
himself: he formed his resolve, and announced it -
"Enough! all shall bolt out at once, like the bullet from the
barrel. Wood, close your book and take off your surplice; John
Green (to the clerk), leave the church: there will be no wedding
to-day." The man obeyed.
Mr. Rochester continued, hardily and recklessly: "Bigamy is an ugly
word!--I meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has out-
manoeuvred me, or Providence has checked me,--perhaps the last. I
am little better than a devil at this moment; and, as my pastor
there would tell me, deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God,
even to the quenchless fire and deathless worm. Gentlemen, my plan
is broken up:- what this lawyer and his client say is true: I have
been married, and the woman to whom I was married lives! You say
you never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at the house up yonder, Wood;
but I daresay you have many a time inclined your ear to gossip about
the mysterious lunatic kept there under watch and ward. Some have
whispered to you that she is my bastard half-sister: some, my cast-
off mistress. I now inform you that she is my wife, whom I married
fifteen years ago,--Bertha Mason by name; sister of this resolute
personage, who is now, with his quivering limbs and white cheeks,
showing you what a stout heart men may bear. Cheer up, Dick!--never
fear me!--I'd almost as soon strike a woman as you. Bertha Mason is
mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three
generations? Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a
drunkard!--as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they
were silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child,
copied her parent in both points. I had a charming partner--pure,
wise, modest: you can fancy I was a happy man. I went through rich
scenes! Oh! my experience has been heavenly, if you only knew it!
But I owe you no further explanation. Briggs, Wood, Mason, I invite
you all to come up to the house and visit Mrs. Poole's patient, and
MY WIFE! You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into
espousing, and judge whether or not I had a right to break the
compact, and seek sympathy with something at least human. This
girl," he continued, looking at me, "knew no more than you, Wood, of
the disgusting secret: she thought all was fair and legal and never
dreamt she was going to be entrapped into a feigned union with a
defrauded wretch, already bound to a bad, mad, and embruted partner!
Come all of you--follow!"
Still holding me fast, he left the church: the three gentlemen came
after. At the front door of the hall we found the carriage.
"Take it back to the coach-house, John," said Mr. Rochester coolly;
"it will not be wanted to-day."
At our entrance, Mrs. Fairfax, Adele, Sophie, Leah, advanced to meet
and greet us.
"To the right-about--every soul!" cried the master; "away with your
congratulations! Who wants them? Not I!--they are fifteen years
too late!"
He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and
still beckoning the gentlemen to follow him, which they did. We
mounted the first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the
third storey: the low, black door, opened by Mr. Rochester's
master-key, admitted us to the tapestried room, with its great bed
and its pictorial cabinet.
"You know this place, Mason," said our guide; "she bit and stabbed
you here."
He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door:
this, too, he opened. In a room without a window, there burnt a
fire guarded by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from
the ceiling by a chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently
cooking something in a saucepan. In the deep shade, at the farther
end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was,
whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell:
it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like
some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a
quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and
face.
"Good-morrow, Mrs. Poole!" said Mr. Rochester. "How are you? and
how is your charge to-day?"
"We're tolerable, sir, I thank you," replied Grace, lifting the
boiling mess carefully on to the hob: "rather snappish, but not
'rageous."
A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favourable report: the
clothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet.
"Ah! sir, she sees you!" exclaimed Grace: "you'd better not stay."
"Only a few moments, Grace: you must allow me a few moments."
"Take care then, sir!--for God's sake, take care!"
The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage,
and gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognised well that purple
face,--those bloated features. Mrs. Poole advanced.
"Keep out of the way," said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside:
"she has no knife now, I suppose, and I'm on my guard."
"One never knows what she has, sir: she is so cunning: it is not
in mortal discretion to fathom her craft."
"We had better leave her," whispered Mason.
"Go to the devil!" was his brother-in-law's recommendation.
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"'Ware!" cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously.
Mr. Rochester flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled
his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek: they
struggled. She was a big woman, in stature almost equalling her
husband, and corpulent besides: she showed virile force in the
contest--more than once she almost throttled him, athletic as he
was. He could have settled her with a well-planted blow; but he
would not strike: he would only wrestle. At last he mastered her
arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and he pinioned them behind her:
with more rope, which was at hand, he bound her to a chair. The
operation was performed amidst the fiercest yells and the most
convulsive plunges. Mr. Rochester then turned to the spectators:
he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate.
"That is MY WIFE," said he. "Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am
ever to know--such are the endearments which are to solace my
leisure hours! And THIS is what I wished to have" (laying his hand
on my shoulder): "this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at
the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon, I
wanted her just as a change after that fierce ragout. Wood and
Briggs, look at the difference! Compare these clear eyes with the
red balls yonder--this face with that mask--this form with that
bulk; then judge me, priest of the gospel and man of the law, and
remember with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged! Off with
you now. I must shut up my prize."
We all withdrew. Mr. Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to give
some further order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me as he
descended the stair.
"You, madam," said he, "are cleared from all blame: your uncle will
be glad to hear it--if, indeed, he should be still living--when Mr.
Mason returns to Madeira."
"My uncle! What of him? Do you know him?"
"Mr. Mason does. Mr. Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of his
house for some years. When your uncle received your letter
intimating the contemplated union between yourself and Mr.
Rochester, Mr. Mason, who was staying at Madeira to recruit his
health, on his way back to Jamaica, happened to be with him. Mr.
Eyre mentioned the intelligence; for he knew that my client here was
acquainted with a gentleman of the name of Rochester. Mr. Mason,
astonished and distressed as you may suppose, revealed the real
state of matters. Your uncle, I am sorry to say, is now on a sick
bed; from which, considering the nature of his disease--decline--and
the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will ever rise. He
could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate you from the
snare into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason to lose
no time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage. He referred
him to me for assistance. I used all despatch, and am thankful I
was not too late: as you, doubtless, must be also. Were I not
morally certain that your uncle will be dead ere you reach Madeira,
I would advise you to accompany Mr. Mason back; but as it is, I
think you had better remain in England till you can hear further,
either from or of Mr. Eyre. Have we anything else to stay for?" he
inquired of Mr. Mason.
"No, no--let us be gone," was the anxious reply; and without waiting
to take leave of Mr. Rochester, they made their exit at the hall
door. The clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of
admonition or reproof, with his haughty parishioner; this duty done,
he too departed.
I heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room, to
which I had now withdrawn. The house cleared, I shut myself in,
fastened the bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded--not to
weep, not to mourn, I was yet too calm for that, but--mechanically
to take off the wedding dress, and replace it by the stuff gown I
had worn yesterday, as I thought, for the last time. I then sat
down: I felt weak and tired. I leaned my arms on a table, and my
head dropped on them. And now I thought: till now I had only
heard, seen, moved--followed up and down where I was led or dragged-
-watched event rush on event, disclosure open beyond disclosure:
but NOW, I THOUGHT.
The morning had been a quiet morning enough--all except the brief
scene with the lunatic: the transaction in the church had not been
noisy; there was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no
dispute, no defiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words
had been spoken, a calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made;
some stern, short questions put by Mr. Rochester; answers,
explanations given, evidence adduced; an open admission of the truth
had been uttered by my master; then the living proof had been seen;
the intruders were gone, and all was over.
I was in my own room as usual--just myself, without obvious change:
nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me. And yet where
was the Jane Eyre of yesterday?--where was her life?--where were her
prospects?
Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman--almost a bride,
was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects
were desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white
December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples,
drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a
frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-
day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve
hours since waved leafy and flagrant as groves between the tropics,
now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway.
My hopes were all dead--struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one
night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on
my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay
stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive. I looked at my
love: that feeling which was my master's--which he had created; it
shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle;
sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr.
Rochester's arms--it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh,
never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted--confidence
destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had been; for he was
not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice to him; I
would not say he had betrayed me; but the attribute of stainless
truth was gone from his idea, and from his presence I must go: THAT
I perceived well. When--how--whither, I could not yet discern; but
he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield. Real
affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only
fitful passion: that was balked; he would want me no more. I
should fear even to cross his path now: my view must be hateful to
him. Oh, how blind had been my eyes! How weak my conduct!
My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim
round me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow.
Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me
down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened
in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no
will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint, longing to be dead.
One idea only still throbbed life-like within me--a remembrance of
God: it begot an unuttered prayer: these words went wandering up
and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered,
but no energy was found to express them -
"Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help."
It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it-
-as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my
lips--it came: in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The
whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched,
my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen
mass. That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, "the waters
came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came
into deep waters; the floods overflowed me."
CHAPTER XXVII
Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and
seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall,
I asked, "What am I to do?"
But the answer my mind gave--"Leave Thornfield at once"--was so
prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears. I said I could not bear
such words now. "That I am not Edward Rochester's bride is the
least part of my woe," I alleged: "that I have wakened out of most
glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror I
could bear and master; but that I must leave him decidedly,
instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it."
But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold
that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted
to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering
I saw laid out for me; and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion
by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her
dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he
would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.
"Let me be torn away," then I cried. "Let another help me!"
"No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall
yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand:
your heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it."
I rose up suddenly, terror-struck at the solitude which so ruthless
a judge haunted,--at the silence which so awful a voice filled. My
head swam as I stood erect. I perceived that I was sickening from
excitement and inanition; neither meat nor drink had passed my lips
that day, for I had taken no breakfast. And, with a strange pang, I
now reflected that, long as I had been shut up here, no message had
been sent to ask how I was, or to invite me to come down: not even
little Adele had tapped at the door; not even Mrs. Fairfax had
sought me. "Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes," I
murmured, as I undrew the bolt and passed out. I stumbled over an
obstacle: my head was still dizzy, my sight was dim, and my limbs
were feeble. I could not soon recover myself. I fell, but not on
to the ground: an outstretched arm caught me. I looked up--I was
supported by Mr. Rochester, who sat in a chair across my chamber
threshold.
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Mưa nhớ gì thì thầm ngoài hiên

​

"You come out at last," he said. "Well, I have been waiting for you
long, and listening: yet not one movement have I heard, nor one
sob: five minutes more of that death-like hush, and I should have
forced the lock like a burglar. So you shun me?--you shut yourself
up and grieve alone! I would rather you had come and upbraided me
with vehemence. You are passionate. I expected a scene of some
kind. I was prepared for the hot rain of tears; only I wanted them
to be shed on my breast: now a senseless floor has received them,
or your drenched handkerchief. But I err: you have not wept at
all! I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but no trace of tears. I
suppose, then, your heart has been weeping blood?"
"Well, Jane! not a word of reproach? Nothing bitter--nothing
poignant? Nothing to cut a feeling or sting a passion? You sit
quietly where I have placed you, and regard me with a weary, passive
look."
"Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one
little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his
bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some
mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his
bloody blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?"
Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot. There was such
deep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly
energy in his manner; and besides, there was such unchanged love in
his whole look and mien--I forgave him all: yet not in words, not
outwardly; only at my heart's core.
"You know I am a scoundrel, Jane?" ere long he inquired wistfully--
wondering, I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness, the
result rather of weakness than of will.
"Yes, sir."
"Then tell me so roundly and sharply--don't spare me."
"I cannot: I am tired and sick. I want some water." He heaved a
sort of shuddering sigh, and taking me in his arms, carried me
downstairs. At first I did not know to what room he had borne me;
all was cloudy to my glazed sight: presently I felt the reviving
warmth of a fire; for, summer as it was, I had become icy cold in my
chamber. He put wine to my lips; I tasted it and revived; then I
ate something he offered me, and was soon myself. I was in the
library--sitting in his chair--he was quite near. "If I could go
out of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be well for me,"
I thought; "then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my
heart-strings in rending them from among Mr. Rochester's. I must
leave him, it appears. I do not want to leave him--I cannot leave
him."
"How are you now, Jane?"
"Much better, sir; I shall be well soon."
"Taste the wine again, Jane."
I obeyed him; then he put the glass on the table, stood before me,
and looked at me attentively. Suddenly he turned away, with an
inarticulate exclamation, full of passionate emotion of some kind;
he walked fast through the room and came back; he stooped towards me
as if to kiss me; but I remembered caresses were now forbidden. I
turned my face away and put his aside.
"What!--How is this?" he exclaimed hastily. "Oh, I know! you won't
kiss the husband of Bertha Mason? You consider my arms filled and
my embraces appropriated?"
"At any rate, there is neither room nor claim for me, sir."
"Why, Jane? I will spare you the trouble of much talking; I will
answer for you--Because I have a wife already, you would reply.--I
guess rightly?"
"Yes."
"If you think so, you must have a strange opinion of me; you must
regard me as a plotting profligate--a base and low rake who has been
simulating disinterested love in order to draw you into a snare
deliberately laid, and strip you of honour and rob you of self-
respect. What do you say to that? I see you can say nothing in the
first place, you are faint still, and have enough to do to draw your
breath; in the second place, you cannot yet accustom yourself to
accuse and revile me, and besides, the flood-gates of tears are
opened, and they would rush out if you spoke much; and you have no
desire to expostulate, to upbraid, to make a scene: you are
thinking how TO ACT--TALKING you consider is of no use. I know you-
-I am on my guard."
"Sir, I do not wish to act against you," I said; and my unsteady
voice warned me to curtail my sentence.
"Not in your sense of the word, but in mine you are scheming to
destroy me. You have as good as said that I am a married man--as a
married man you will shun me, keep out of my way: just now you have
refused to kiss me. You intend to make yourself a complete stranger
to me: to live under this roof only as Adele's governess; if ever I
say a friendly word to you, if ever a friendly feeling inclines you
again to me, you will say,--'That man had nearly made me his
mistress: I must be ice and rock to him;' and ice and rock you will
accordingly become."
I cleared and steadied my voice to reply: "All is changed about me,
sir; I must change too--there is no doubt of that; and to avoid
fluctuations of feeling, and continual combats with recollections
and associations, there is only one way--Adele must have a new
governess, sir."
"Oh, Adele will go to school--I have settled that already; nor do I
mean to torment you with the hideous associations and recollections
of Thornfield Hall--this accursed place--this tent of Achan--this
insolent vault, offering the ghastliness of living death to the
light of the open sky--this narrow stone hell, with its one real
fiend, worse than a legion of such as we imagine. Jane, you shall
not stay here, nor will I. I was wrong ever to bring you to
Thornfield Hall, knowing as I did how it was haunted. I charged
them to conceal from you, before I ever saw you, all knowledge of
the curse of the place; merely because I feared Adele never would
have a governess to stay if she knew with what inmate she was
housed, and my plans would not permit me to remove the maniac
elsewhere--though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more
retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely
enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation,
in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the
arrangement. Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of
her charge: but to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a
tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate.
"Concealing the mad-woman's neighbourhood from you, however, was
something like covering a child with a cloak and laying it down near
a upas-tree: that demon's vicinage is poisoned, and always was.
But I'll shut up Thornfield Hall: I'll nail up the front door and
board the lower windows: I'll give Mrs. Poole two hundred a year to
live here with MY WIFE, as you term that fearful hag: Grace will do
much for money, and she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby
Retreat, to bear her company and be at hand to give her aid in the
paroxysms, when MY WIFE is prompted by her familiar to burn people
in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their
bones, and so on--"
"Sir," I interrupted him, "you are inexorable for that unfortunate
lady: you speak of her with hate--with vindictive antipathy. It is
cruel--she cannot help being mad."
"Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you
don't know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is
not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I
should hate you?"
"I do indeed, sir."
"Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing
about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your
flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would
still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it
would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine
you, and not a strait waistcoat--your grasp, even in fury, would
have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did
this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond
as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with
disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have no
watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring
tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary
of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of
recognition for me.--But why do I follow that train of ideas? I was
talking of removing you from Thornfield. All, you know, is prepared
for prompt departure: to-morrow you shall go. I only ask you to
endure one more night under this roof, Jane; and then, farewell to
its miseries and terrors for ever! I have a place to repair to,
which will be a secure sanctuary from hateful reminiscences, from
unwelcome intrusion--even from falsehood and slander."
"And take Adele with you, sir," I interrupted; "she will be a
companion for you."
"What do you mean, Jane? I told you I would send Adele to school;
and what do I want with a child for a companion, and not my own
child,--a French dancer's bastard? Why do you importune me about
her! I say, why do you assign Adele to me for a companion?"
"You spoke of a retirement, sir; and retirement and solitude are
dull: too dull for you."
"Solitude! solitude!" he reiterated with irritation. "I see I must
come to an explanation. I don't know what sphynx-like expression is
forming in your countenance. You are to share my solitude. Do you
understand?"
I shook my head: it required a degree of courage, excited as he was
becoming, even to risk that mute sign of dissent. He had been
walking fast about the room, and he stopped, as if suddenly rooted
to one spot. He looked at me long and hard: I turned my eyes from
him, fixed them on the fire, and tried to assume and maintain a
quiet, collected aspect.
"Now for the hitch in Jane's character," he said at last, speaking
more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. "The
reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there
would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and
exasperation, and endless trouble! By God! I long to exert a
fraction of Samson's strength, and break the entanglement like tow!"
He recommenced his walk, but soon again stopped, and this time just
before me.
"Jane! will you hear reason?" (he stooped and approached his lips to
my ear); "because, if you won't, I'll try violence." His voice was
hoarse; his look that of a man who is just about to burst an
insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild license. I saw that
in another moment, and with one impetus of frenzy more, I should be
able to do nothing with him. The present--the passing second of
time--was all I had in which to control and restrain him--a movement
of repulsion, flight, fear would have sealed my doom,--and his. But
I was not afraid: not in the least. I felt an inward power; a
sense of influence, which supported me. The crisis was perilous;
but not without its charm: such as the Indian, perhaps, feels when
he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I took hold of his clenched
hand, loosened the contorted fingers, and said to him, soothingly -
"Sit down; I'll talk to you as long as you like, and hear all you
have to say, whether reasonable or unreasonable."
He sat down: but he did not get leave to speak directly. I had
been struggling with tears for some time: I had taken great pains
to repress them, because I knew he would not like to see me weep.
Now, however, I considered it well to let them flow as freely and as
long as they liked. If the flood annoyed him, so much the better.
So I gave way and cried heartily.
Soon I heard him earnestly entreating me to be composed. I said I
could not while he was in such a passion.
"But I am not angry, Jane: I only love you too well; and you had
steeled your little pale face with such a resolute, frozen look, I
could not endure it. Hush, now, and wipe your eyes."
His softened voice announced that he was subdued; so I, in my turn,
became calm. Now he made an effort to rest his head on my shoulder,
but I would not permit it. Then he would draw me to him: no.
"Jane! Jane!" he said, in such an accent of bitter sadness it
thrilled along every nerve I had; "you don't love me, then? It was
only my station, and the rank of my wife, that you valued? Now that
you think me disqualified to become your husband, you recoil from my
touch as if I were some toad or ape."
These words cut me: yet what could I do or I say? I ought probably
to have done or said nothing; but I was so tortured by a sense of
remorse at thus hurting his feelings, I could not control the wish
to drop balm where I had wounded.
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Mưa nhớ gì thì thầm ngoài hiên

​

"I DO love you," I said, "more than ever: but I must not show or
indulge the feeling: and this is the last time I must express it."
"The last time, Jane! What! do you think you can live with me, and
see me daily, and yet, if you still love me, be always cold and
distant?"
"No, sir; that I am certain I could not; and therefore I see there
is but one way: but you will be furious if I mention it."
"Oh, mention it! If I storm, you have the art of weeping."
"Mr. Rochester, I must leave you."
"For how long, Jane? For a few minutes, while you smooth your hair-
-which is somewhat dishevelled; and bathe your face--which looks
feverish?"
"I must leave Adele and Thornfield. I must part with you for my
whole life: I must begin a new existence among strange faces and
strange scenes."
"Of course: I told you you should. I pass over the madness about
parting from me. You mean you must become a part of me. As to the
new existence, it is all right: you shall yet be my wife: I am not
married. You shall be Mrs. Rochester--both virtually and nominally.
I shall keep only to you so long as you and I live. You shall go to
a place I have in the south of France: a whitewashed villa on the
shores of the Me***erranean. There you shall live a happy, and
guarded, and most innocent life. Never fear that I wish to lure you
into error--to make you my mistress. Why did you shake your head?
Jane, you must be reasonable, or in truth I shall again become
frantic."
His voice and hand quivered: his large nostrils dilated; his eye
blazed: still I dared to speak.
"Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact acknowledged this morning
by yourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be
your mistress: to say otherwise is sophistical--is false."
"Jane, I am not a gentle-tempered man--you forget that: I am not
long-enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me
and yourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and--
beware!"
He bared his wrist, and offered it to me: the blood was forsaking
his cheek and lips, they were growing livid; I was distressed on all
hands. To agitate him thus deeply, by a resistance he so abhorred,
was cruel: to yield was out of the question. I did what human
beings do instinctively when they are driven to utter extremity--
looked for aid to one higher than man: the words "God help me!"
burst involuntarily from my lips.
"I am a fool!" cried Mr. Rochester suddenly. "I keep telling her I
am not married, and do not explain to her why. I forget she knows
nothing of the character of that woman, or of the circumstances
attending my infernal union with her. Oh, I am certain Jane will
agree with me in opinion, when she knows all that I know! Just put
your hand in mine, Janet--that I may have the evidence of touch as
well as sight, to prove you are near me--and I will in a few words
show you the real state of the case. Can you listen to me
"Yes, sir; for hours if you will."
"I ask only minutes. Jane, did you ever hear or know at I was not
the eldest son of my house: that I had once a brother older than
I?"
"I remember Mrs. Fairfax told me so once."
"And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious, grasping
man?"
"I have understood something to that effect."
"Well, Jane, being so, it was his resolution to keep the property
together; he could not bear the idea of dividing his estate and
leaving me a fair portion: all, he resolved, should go to my
brother, Rowland. Yet as little could he endure that a son of his
should be a poor man. I must be provided for by a wealthy marriage.
He sought me a partner betimes. Mr. Mason, a West India planter and
merchant, was his old acquaintance. He was certain his possessions
were real and vast: he made inquiries. Mr. Mason, he found, had a
son and daughter; and he learned from him that he could and would
give the latter a fortune of thirty thousand pounds: that sufficed.
When I left college, I was sent out to Jamaica, to espouse a bride
already courted for me. My father said nothing about her money; but
he told me Miss Mason was the boast of Spanish Town for her beauty:
and this was no lie. I found her a fine woman, in the style of
Blanche Ingram: tall, dark, and majestic. Her family wished to
secure me because I was of a good race; and so did she. They showed
her to me in parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom saw her alone,
and had very little private conversation with her. She flattered
me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and
accomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to admire her and
envy me. I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and
being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her.
There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society,
the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry
a man to its commission. Her relatives encouraged me; competitors
piqued me; she allured me: a marriage was achieved almost before I
knew where I was. Oh, I have no respect for myself when I think of
that act!--an agony of inward contempt masters me. I never loved, I
never esteemed, I did not even know her. I was not sure of the
existence of one virtue in her nature: I had marked neither
modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement in her mind or
manners--and, I married her:- gross, grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead
that I was! With less sin I might have--But let me remember to whom
I am speaking."
"My bride's mother I had never seen: I understood she was dead.
The honeymoon over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and shut
up in a lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother, too--a
complete dumb idiot. The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom I
cannot hate, whilst I abhor all his kindred, because he has some
grains of affection in his feeble mind, shown in the continued
interest he takes in his wretched sister, and also in a dog-like
attachment he once bore me), will probably be in the same state one
day. My father and my brother Rowland knew all this; but they
thought only of the thirty thousand pounds, and joined in the plot
against me."
"These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery of
concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my
wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes
obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and
singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to
anything larger--when I found that I could not pass a single
evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort; that
kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because
whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at
once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile--when I perceived that
I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant
would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable
temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting
orders--even then I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I
curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my repentance and disgust
in secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt.
"Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details: some strong
words shall express what I have to say. I lived with that woman
upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed:
her character ripened and developed with frightful rapi***y; her
vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty
could check them, and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy
intellect she had, and what giant propensities! How fearful were
the curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the
true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the
hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a
wife at once intemperate and unchaste.
"My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four
years my father died too. I was rich enough now--yet poor to
hideous indigence: a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever
saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society
a part of me. And I could not rid myself of it by any legal
proceedings: for the doctors now discovered that MY WIFE was mad--
her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity. Jane,
you don't like my narrative; you look almost sick--shall I defer the
rest to another day?"
"No, sir, finish it now; I pity you--I do earnestly pity you."
"Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of
tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of
those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous,
selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes,
crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But
that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your
whole face is full at this moment--with which your eyes are now
almost overflowing--with which your heart is heaving--with which
your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling, is the
suffering mother of love: its anguish is the very natal pang of the
divine passion. I accept it, Jane; let the daughter have free
advent--my arms wait to receive her."
"Now, sir, proceed; what did you do when you found she was mad?"
"Jane, I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self-respect
was all that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes of the
world, I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour; but I resolved
to be clean in my own sight--and to the last I repudiated the
contamination of her crimes, and wrenched myself from connection
with her mental defects. Still, society associated my name and
person with hers; I yet saw her and heard her daily: something of
her breath (faugh!) mixed with the air I breathed; and besides, I
remembered I had once been her husband--that recollection was then,
and is now, inexpressibly odious to me; moreover, I knew that while
she lived I could never be the husband of another and better wife;
and, though five years my senior (her family and her father had lied
to me even in the particular of her age), she was likely to live as
long as I, being as robust in frame as she was infirm in mind.
Thus, at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless.
"One night I had been awakened by her yells--(since the medical men
had pronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up)--it was a
fiery West Indian night; one of the description that frequently
precede the hurricanes of those climates. Being unable to sleep in
bed, I got up and opened the window. The air was like sulphur-
steams--I could find no refreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes came
buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room; the sea, which I
could hear from thence, rumbled dull like an earthquake--black
clouds were casting up over it; the moon was setting in the waves,
broad and red, like a hot cannon-ball--she threw her last bloody
glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest. I was
physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and my ears were
filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein she
momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with
such language!--no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary
than she: though two rooms off, I heard every word--the thin
partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction
to her wolfish cries.
"'This life,' said I at last, 'is hell: this is the air--those are
the sounds of the bottomless pit! I have a right to deliver myself
from it if I can. The sufferings of this mortal state will leave me
with the heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul. Of the fanatic's
burning eternity I have no fear: there is not a future state worse
than this present one--let me break away, and go home to God!'
"I said this whilst I knelt down at, and unlocked a trunk which
contained a brace of loaded pistols: I mean to shoot myself. I
only entertained the intention for a moment; for, not being insane,
the crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair, which had originated
the wish and design of self-destruction, was past in a second.
"A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through the
open casement: the storm broke, streamed, thundered, blazed, and
the air grew pure. I then framed and fixed a resolution. While I
walked under the dripping orange-trees of my wet garden, and amongst
its drenched pomegranates and pine-apples, and while the refulgent
dawn of the tropics kindled round me--I reasoned thus, Jane--and now
listen; for it was true Wisdom that consoled me in that hour, and
showed me the right path to follow.
"The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed
leaves, and the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty; my
heart, dried up and scorched for a long time, swelled to the tone,
and filled with living blood--my being longed for renewal--my soul
thirsted for a pure draught. I saw hope revive--and felt
regeneration possible. From a flowery arch at the bottom of my
garden I gazed over the sea--bluer than the sky: the old world was
beyond; clear prospects opened thus:-
"'Go,' said Hope, 'and live again in Europe: there it is not known
what a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to
you. You may take the maniac with you to England; confine her with
due attendance and precautions at Thornfield: then travel yourself
to what clime you will, and form what new tie you like. That woman,
who has so abused your long-suffering, so sullied your name, so
outraged your honour, so blighted your youth, is not your wife, nor
are you her husband. See that she is cared for as her con***ion
demands, and you have done all that God and humanity require of you.
Let her identity, her connection with yourself, be buried in
oblivion: you are bound to impart them to no living being. Place
her in safety and comfort: shelter her degradation with secrecy,
and leave her.'
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Mưa nhớ gì thì thầm ngoài hiên

​

"I acted precisely on this suggestion. My father and brother had
not made my marriage known to their acquaintance; because, in the
very first letter I wrote to apprise them of the union--having
already begun to experience extreme disgust of its consequences,
and, from the family character and constitution, seeing a hideous
future opening to me--I added an urgent charge to keep it secret:
and very soon the infamous conduct of the wife my father had
selected for me was such as to make him blush to own her as his
daughter-in-law. Far from desiring to publish the connection, he
became as anxious to conceal it as myself.
"To England, then, I conveyed her; a fearful voyage I had with such
a monster in the vessel. Glad was I when I at last got her to
Thornfield, and saw her safely lodged in that third-storey room, of
whose secret inner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild
beast's den--a goblin's cell. I had some trouble in finding an
attendant for her, as it was necessary to select one on whose
fidelity dependence could be placed; for her ravings would
inevitably betray my secret: besides, she had lucid intervals of
days--sometimes weeks--which she filled up with abuse of me. At
last I hired Grace Poole from the Grimbsy Retreat. She and the
surgeon, Carter (who dressed Mason's wounds that night he was
stabbed and worried), are the only two I have ever admitted to my
confidence. Mrs. Fairfax may indeed have suspected something, but
she could have gained no precise knowledge as to facts. Grace has,
on the whole, proved a good keeper; though, owing partly to a fault
of her own, of which it appears nothing can cure her, and which is
incident to her harassing profession, her vigilance has been more
than once lulled and baffled. The lunatic is both cunning and
malignant; she has never failed to take advantage of her guardian's
temporary lapses; once to secrete the knife with which she stabbed
her brother, and twice to possess herself of the key of her cell,
and issue therefrom in the night-time. On the first of these
occasions, she perpetrated the attempt to burn me in my bed; on the
second, she paid that ghastly visit to you. I thank Providence, who
watched over you, that she then spent her fury on your wedding
apparel, which perhaps brought back vague reminiscences of her own
bridal days: but on what might have happened, I cannot endure to
reflect. When I think of the thing which flew at my throat this
morning, hanging its black and scarlet visage over the nest of my
dove, my blood curdles
"And what, sir," I asked, while he paused, "did you do when you had
settled her here? Where did you go?"
"What did I do, Jane? I transformed myself into a will-o'-the-wisp.
Where did I go? I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the March-
spirit. I sought the Continent, and went devious through all its
lands. My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent
woman, whom I could love: a contrast to the fury I left at
Thornfield--"
"But you could not marry, sir."
"I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought. It was
not my original intention to deceive, as I have deceived you. I
meant to tell my tale plainly, and make my proposals openly: and it
appeared to me so absolutely rational that I should be considered
free to love and be loved, I never doubted some woman might be found
willing and able to understand my case and accept me, in spite of
the curse with which I was burdened."
"Well, sir?"
"When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You open
your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless
movement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you,
and you wanted to read the tablet of one's heart. But before I go
on, tell me what you mean by your 'Well, sir?' It is a small phrase
very frequent with you; and which many a time has drawn me on and on
through interminable talk: I don't very well know why."
"I mean,--What next? How did you proceed? What came of such an
event?"
"Precisely! and what do you wish to know now?"
"Whether you found any one you liked: whether you asked her to
marry you; and what she said."
"I can tell you whether I found any one I liked, and whether I asked
her to marry me: but what she said is yet to be recorded in the
book of Fate. For ten long years I roved about, living first in one
capital, then another: sometimes in St. Petersburg; oftener in
Paris; occasionally in Rome, Naples, and Florence. Provided with
plenty of money and the passport of an old name, I could choose my
own society: no circles were closed against me. I sought my ideal
of a woman amongst English ladies, French countesses, Italian
signoras, and German grafinnen. I could not find her. Sometimes,
for a fleeting moment, I thought I caught a glance, heard a tone,
beheld a form, which announced the realisation of my dream: but I
was presently undeserved. You are not *****ppose that I desired
perfection, either of mind or person. I longed only for what suited
me--for the antipodes of the Creole: and I longed vainly. Amongst
them all I found not one whom, had I been ever so free, I--warned as
I was of the risks, the horrors, the loathings of incongruous
unions--would have asked to marry me. Disappointment made me
reckless. I tried dissipation--never debauchery: that I hated, and
hate. That was my Indian Messalina's attribute: rooted disgust at
it and her restrained me much, even in pleasure. Any enjoyment that
bordered on riot seemed to approach me to her and her vices, and I
eschewed it.
"Yet I could not live alone; so I tried the companionship of
mistresses. The first I chose was Celine Varens--another of those
steps which make a man spurn himself when he recalls them. You
already know what she was, and how my liaison with her terminated.
She had two successors: an Italian, Giacinta, and a German, Clara;
both considered singularly handsome. What was their beauty to me in
a few weeks? Giacinta was unprincipled and violent: I tired of her
in three months. Clara was honest and quiet; but heavy, mindless,
and unimpressible: not one whit to my taste. I was glad to give
her a sufficient sum to set her up in a good line of business, and
so get decently rid of her. But, Jane, I see by your face you are
not forming a very favourable opinion of me just now. You think me
an unfeeling, loose-principled rake: don't you?"
"I don't like you so well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir.
Did it not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way, first
with one mistress and then another? You talk of it as a mere matter
of course."
"It was with me; and I did not like it. It was a grovelling fashion
of existence: I should never like to return to it. Hiring a
mistress is the next worse thing to buying a slave: both are often
by nature, and always by position, inferior: and to live familiarly
with inferiors is degrading. I now hate the recollection of the
time I passed with Celine, Giacinta, and Clara."
I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain
inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the
teaching that had ever been instilled into me, as--under any
pretext--with any justification--through any temptation--to become
the successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with
the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory. I
did not give utterance to this conviction: it was enough to feel
it. I impressed it on my heart, that it might remain there to serve
me as aid in the time of trial.
"Now, Jane, why don't you say 'Well, sir?' I have not done. You
are looking grave. You disapprove of me still, I see. But let me
come to the point. Last January, rid of all mistresses--in a harsh,
bitter frame of mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely life--
corroded with disappointment, sourly disposed against all men, and
especially against all womankind (for I began to regard the notion
of an intellectual, faithful, loving woman as a mere dream),
recalled by business, I came back to England.
"On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall.
Abhorred spot! I expected no peace--no pleasure there. On a stile
in Hay Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself. I passed
it as negligently as I did the pollard willow opposite to it: I had
no presentiment of what it would be to me; no inward warning that
the arbitress of my life--my genius for good or evil--waited there
in humble guise. I did not know it, even when, on the occasion of
Mesrour's accident, it came up and gravely offered me help.
Childish and slender creature! It seemed as if a linnet had hopped
to my foot and proposed to bear me on its tiny wing. I was surly;
but the thing would not go: it stood by me with strange
perseverance, and looked and spoke with a sort of authority. I must
be aided, and by that hand: and aided I was.
"When once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new--a fresh
sap and sense--stole into my frame. It was well I had learnt that
this elf must return to me--that it belonged to my house down below-
-or I could not have felt it pass away from under my hand, and seen
it vanish behind the dim hedge, without singular regret. I heard
you come home that night, Jane, though probably you were not aware
that I thought of you or watched for you. The next day I observed
you--myself unseen--for half-an-hour, while you played with Adele in
the gallery. It was a snowy day, I recollect, and you could not go
out of doors. I was in my room; the door was ajar: I could both
listen and watch. Adele claimed your outward attention for a while;
yet I fancied your thoughts were elsewhere: but you were very
patient with her, my little Jane; you talked to her and amused her a
long time. When at last she left you, you lapsed at once into deep
reverie: you betook yourself slowly to pace the gallery. Now and
then, in passing a casement, you glanced out at the thick-falling
snow; you listened to the sobbing wind, and again you paced gently
on and dreamed. I think those day visions were not dark: there was
a pleasurable illumination in your eye occasionally, a soft
excitement in your aspect, which told of no bitter, bilious,
hypochondriac brooding: your look revealed rather the sweet musings
of youth when its spirit follows on willing wings the flight of Hope
up and on to an ideal heaven. The voice of Mrs. Fairfax, speaking
to a servant in the hall, wakened you: and how curiously you smiled
to and at yourself, Janet! There was much sense in your smile: it
was very shrewd, and seemed to make light of your own abstraction.
It seemed to say--'My fine visions are all very well, but I must not
forget they are absolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green
flowery Eden in my brain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at
my feet a rough tract to travel, and around me gather black tempests
to encounter.' You ran downstairs and demanded of Mrs. Fairfax some
occupation: the weekly house accounts to make up, or something of
that sort, I think it was. I was vexed with you for getting out of
my sight.
"Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you to my
presence. An unusual--to me--a perfectly new character I suspected
was yours: I desired to search it deeper and know it better. You
entered the room with a look and air at once shy and independent:
you were quaintly dressed--much as you are now. I made you talk:
ere long I found you full of strange contrasts. Your garb and
manner were restricted by rule; your air was often diffident, and
altogether that of one refined by nature, but absolutely unused to
society, and a good deal afraid of making herself disadvantageously
conspicuous by some solecism or blunder; yet when addressed, you
lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing eye to your interlocutor's
face: there was penetration and power in each glance you gave; when
plied by close questions, you found ready and round answers. Very
soon you seemed to get used to me: I believe you felt the existence
of sympathy between you and your grim and cross master, Jane; for it
was astonishing to see how quickly a certain pleasant ease
tranquillised your manner: snarl as I would, you showed no
surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure at my moroseness; you
watched me, and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet
sagacious grace I cannot describe. I was at once content and
stimulated with what I saw: I liked what I had seen, and wished to
see more. Yet, for a long time, I treated you distantly, and sought
your company rarely. I was an intellectual epicure, and wished to
prolong the gratification of making this novel and piquant
acquaintance: besides, I was for a while troubled with a haunting
fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade--the
sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not then know that
it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of
one, cut in an indestructible gem. Moreover, I wished to see
whether you would seek me if I shunned you--but you did not; you
kept in the schoolroom as still as your own desk and easel; if by
chance I met you, you passed me as soon, and with as little token of
recognition, as was consistent with respect. Your habitual
expression in those days, Jane, was a thoughtful look; not
despondent, for you were not sickly; but not buoyant, for you had
little hope, and no actual pleasure. I wondered what you thought of
me, or if you ever thought of me, and resolved to find this out.
Gió nhớ gì ngẩn ngơ ngoài hiên
Mưa nhớ gì thì thầm ngoài hiên

​

"I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in your
glance, and genial in your manner, when you conversed: I saw you
had a social heart; it was the silent schoolroom--it was the tedium
of your life--that made you mournful. I permitted myself the
delight of being kind to you; kindness stirred emotion soon: your
face became soft in expression, your tones gentle; I liked my name
pronounced by your lips in a grateful happy accent. I used to enjoy
a chance meeting with you, Jane, at this time: there was a curious
hesitation in your manner: you glanced at me with a slight trouble-
-a hovering doubt: you did not know what my caprice might be--
whether I was going to play the master and be stern, or the friend
and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often to simulate the
first whim; and, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such bloom
and light and bliss rose to your young, wistful features, I had much
ado often to avoid straining you then and there to my heart."
"Don't talk any more of those days, sir," I interrupted, furtively
dashing away some tears from my eyes; his language was torture to
me; for I knew what I must do--and do soon--and all these
reminiscences, and these revelations of his feelings only made my
work more difficult.
"No, Jane," he returned: "what necessity is there to dwell on the
Past, when the Present is so much surer--the Future so much
brighter?"
I shuddered to hear the infatuated assertion.
"You see now how the case stands--do you not?" he continued. "After
a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in
dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly
love--I have found you. You are my sympathy--my better self--my
good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think
you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived
in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of
life, wraps my existence about you, and, kindling in pure, powerful
flame, fuses you and me in one.
"It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry you.
To tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery: you know now
that I had but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive
you; but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your character. I
feared early instilled prejudice: I wanted to have you safe before
hazarding confidences. This was cowardly: I should have appealed
to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do now--opened to
you plainly my life of agony--described to you my hunger and thirst
after a higher and worthier existence--shown to you, not my
RESOLUTION (that word is weak), but my resistless BENT to love
faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well loved in return.
Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity and to
give me yours. Jane--give it me now."
A pause.
"Why are you silent, Jane?"
I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my
vitals. Terrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning!
Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than
I was loved; and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped: and
I must renounce love and idol. One drear word comprised my
intolerable duty--"Depart!"
"Jane, you understand what I want of you? Just this promise--'I
will be yours, Mr. Rochester.'"
"Mr. Rochester, I will NOT be yours."
Another long silence.
"Jane!" recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down with
grief, and turned me stone-cold with ominous terror--for this still
voice was the pant of a lion rising--"Jane, do you mean to go one
way in the world, and to let me go another?"
"I do."
"Jane" (bending towards and embracing me), "do you mean it now?"
"I do."
"And now?" softly kissing my forehead and cheek.
"I do," extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely.
"Oh, Jane, this is bitter! This--this is wicked. It would not be
wicked to love me."
"It would to obey you."
A wild look raised his brows--crossed his features: he rose; but he
forebore yet. I laid my hand on the back of a chair for support: I
shook, I feared--but I resolved.
"One instant, Jane. Give one glance to my horrible life when you
are gone. All happiness will be torn away with you. What then is
left? For a wife I have but the maniac upstairs: as well might you
refer me to some corpse in yonder churchyard. What shall I do,
Jane? Where turn for a companion and for some hope?"
"Do as I do: trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope
to meet again there."
"Then you will not yield?"
"No."
"Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed?" His
voice rose.
"I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil."
"Then you snatch love and innocence from me? You fling me back on
lust for a passion--vice for an occupation?"
"Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it
for myself. We were born to strive and endure--you as well as I:
do so. You will forget me before I forget you."
"You make me a liar by such language: you sully my honour. I
declared I could not change: you tell me to my face I shall change
soon. And what a distortion in your judgment, what a perversity in
your ideas, is proved by your conduct! Is it better to drive a
fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, no
man being injured by the breach? for you have neither relatives nor
acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me?"
This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason
turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting
him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured
wildly. "Oh, comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his
danger--look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong
nature; consider the recklessness following on despair--soothe him;
save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in
the world cares for YOU? or who will be injured by what you do?"
Still indomitable was the reply--"I care for myself. The more
solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I
will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned
by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was
sane, and not mad--as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the
times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as
this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour;
stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual
convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They
have a worth--so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it
now, it is because I am insane--quite insane: with my veins running
fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs.
Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at
this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot."
I did. Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so.
His fury was wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a
moment, whatever followed; he crossed the floor and seized my arm
and grasped my waist. He seemed to devour me with his flaming
glance: physically, I felt, at the moment, powerless as stubble
exposed to the draught and glow of a furnace: mentally, I still
possessed my soul, and with it the certainty of ultimate safety.
The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter--often an unconscious, but
still a truthful interpreter--in the eye. My eye rose to his; and
while I looked in his fierce face I gave an involuntary sigh; his
gripe was painful, and my over-taxed strength almost exhausted.
Gió nhớ gì ngẩn ngơ ngoài hiên
Mưa nhớ gì thì thầm ngoài hiên

​

"Never," said he, as he ground his teeth, "never was anything at
once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my
hand!" (And he shook me with the force of his hold.) "I could bend
her with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent,
if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the
resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more
than courage--with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I
cannot get at it--the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I
rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose.
Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to
heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-
place. And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue and
purity--that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself you
could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you
would: seized against your will, you will elude the grasp like an
essence--you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh! come,
Jane, come!"
As he said this, he released me from his clutch, and only looked at
me. The look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain: only
an idiot, however, would have succumbed now. I had dared and
baffled his fury; I must elude his sorrow: I retired to the door.
"You are going, Jane?"
"I am going, sir."
"You are leaving me?"
"Yes."
"You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My
deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?"
What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard it was to
reiterate firmly, "I am going."
"Jane!"
"Mr. Rochester!"
"Withdraw, then,--I consent; but remember, you leave me here in
anguish. Go up to your own room; think over all I have said, and,
Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings--think of me."
He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. "Oh,
Jane! my hope--my love--my life!" broke in anguish from his lips.
Then came a deep, strong sob.
I had already gained the door; but, reader, I walked back--walked
back as determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him; I
turned his face from the cushion to me; I kissed his cheek; I
smoothed his hair with my hand.
"God bless you, my dear master!" I said. "God keep you from harm
and wrong--direct you, solace you--reward you well for your past
kindness to me."
"Little Jane's love would have been my best reward," he answered;
"without it, my heart is broken. But Jane will give me her love:
yes--nobly, generously."
Up the blood rushed to his face; forth flashed the fire from his
eyes; erect he sprang; he held his arms out; but I evaded the
embrace, and at once quitted the room.
"Farewell!" was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added,
"Farewell for ever!"
That night I never thought to sleep; but a slumber fell on me as
soon as I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the
scenes of childhood: I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead;
that the night was dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears.
The light that long ago had struck me into syncope, recalled in this
vision, seemed glidingly to mount the wall, and tremblingly to pause
in the centre of the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head to look:
the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim; the gleam was such as the
moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I watched her come--
watched with the strangest anticipation; as though some word of doom
were to be written on her disk. She broke forth as never moon yet
burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved
them away; then, not a moon, but a white human form shone in the
azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on
me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet
so near, it whispered in my heart -
"My daughter, flee temptation."
"Mother, I will."
So I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream. It was
yet night, but July nights are short: soon after midnight, dawn
comes. "It cannot be too early to commence the task I have to
fulfil," thought I. I rose: I was dressed; for I had taken off
nothing but my shoes. I knew where to find in my drawers some
linen, a locket, a ring. In seeking these articles, I encountered
the beads of a pearl necklace Mr. Rochester had forced me to accept
a few days ago. I left that; it was not mine: it was the visionary
bride's who had melted in air. The other articles I made up in a
parcel; my purse, containing twenty shillings (it was all I had), I
put in my pocket: I tied on my straw bonnet, pinned my shawl, took
the parcel and my slippers, which I would not put on yet, and stole
from my room.
"Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax!" I whispered, as I glided past her
door. "Farewell, my darling Adele!" I said, as I glanced towards
the nursery. No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace
her. I had to deceive a fine ear: for aught I knew it might now be
listening.
I would have got past Mr. Rochester's chamber without a pause; but
my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot
was forced to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was
walking restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed
while I listened. There was a heaven--a temporary heaven--in this
room for me, if I chose: I had but to go in and to say -
"Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till
death," and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought
of this.
That kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with
impatience for day. He would send for me in the morning; I should
be gone. He would have me sought for: vainly. He would feel
himself forsaken; his love rejected: he would suffer; perhaps grow
desperate. I thought of this too. My hand moved towards the lock:
I caught it back, and glided on.
Drearily I wound my way downstairs: I knew what I had to do, and I
did it mechanically. I sought the key of the side-door in the
kitchen; I sought, too, a phial of oil and a feather; I oiled the
key and the lock. I got some water, I got some bread: for perhaps
I should have to walk far; and my strength, sorely shaken of late,
must not break down. All this I did without one sound. I opened
the door, passed out, shut it softly. Dim dawn glimmered in the
yard. The great gates were closed and locked; but a wicket in one
of them was only latched. Through that I departed: it, too, I
shut; and now I was out of Thornfield.
A mile off, beyond the fields, lay a road which stretched in the
contrary direction to Millcote; a road I had never travelled, but
often noticed, and wondered where it led: thither I bent my steps.
No reflection was to be allowed now: not one glance was to be cast
back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either
to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet--
so deadly sad--that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage
and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank: something
like the world when the deluge was gone by.
I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise. I
believe it was a lovely summer morning: I know my shoes, which I
had put on when I left the house, were soon wet with dew. But I
looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature.
He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold,
thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block
and axe-edge; of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave
gaping at the end: and I thought of drear flight and homeless
wandering--and oh! with agony I thought of what I left. I could not
help it. I thought of him now--in his room--watching the sunrise;
hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him and be his.
I longed to be his; I panted to return: it was not too late; I
could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement. As yet my
flight, I was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and be his
comforter--his pride; his redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin.
Oh, that fear of his self-abandonment--far worse than my
abandonment--how it goaded me! It was a barbed arrow-head in my
breast; it tore me when I tried to extract it; it sickened me when
remembrance thrust it farther in. Birds began singing in brake and
copse: birds were faithful to their mates; birds were emblems of
love. What was I? In the midst of my pain of heart and frantic
effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I had no solace from self-
approbation: none even from self-respect. I had injured--wounded--
left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes. Still I could not
turn, nor retrace one step. God must have led me on. As to my own
will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled
the other. I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way:
fast, fast I went like one delirious. A weakness, beginning
inwardly, extending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell: I lay on
the ground some minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf. I had
some fear--or hope--that here I should die: but I was soon up;
crawling forwards on my hands and knees, and then again raised to my
feet--as eager and as determined as ever to reach the road.
When I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge;
and while I sat, I heard wheels, and saw a coach come on. I stood
up and lifted my hand; it stopped. I asked where it was going: the
driver named a place a long way off, and where I was sure Mr.
Rochester had no connections. I asked for what sum he would take me
there; he said thirty shillings; I answered I had but twenty; well,
he would try to make it do. He further gave me leave to get into
the inside, as the vehicle was empty: I entered, was shut in, and
it rolled on its way.
Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes
never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from
mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so
agonised as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me,
dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.
Gió nhớ gì ngẩn ngơ ngoài hiên
Mưa nhớ gì thì thầm ngoài hiên

​

CHAPTER XXVIII
Two days are passed. It is a summer evening; the coachman has set
me down at a place called Whitcross; he could take me no farther for
the sum I had given, and I was not possessed of another shilling in
the world. The coach is a mile off by this time; I am alone. At
this moment I discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the
pocket of the coach, where I had placed it for safety; there it
remains, there it must remain; and now, I am absolutely destitute.
Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet; it is but a stone pillar
set up where four roads meet: whitewashed, I suppose, to be more
obvious at a distance and in darkness. Four arms spring from its
summit: the nearest town to which these point is, according to the
inscription, distant ten miles; the farthest, above twenty. From
the well-known names of these towns I learn in what county I have
lighted; a north-midland shire, dusk with moorland, ridged with
mountain: this I see. There are great moors behind and on each
hand of me; there are waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley
at my feet. The population here must be thin, and I see no
passengers on these roads: they stretch out east, west, north, and
south--white, broad, lonely; they are all cut in the moor, and the
heather grows deep and wild to their very verge. Yet a chance
traveller might pass by; and I wish no eye to see me now: strangers
would wonder what I am doing, lingering here at the sign-post,
evidently objectless and lost. I might be questioned: I could give
no answer but what would sound incredible and excite suspicion. Not
a tie holds me to human society at this moment--not a charm or hope
calls me where my fellow-creatures are--none that saw me would have
a kind thought or a good wish for me. I have no relative but the
universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and ask repose.
I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply
furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth;
I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite
crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of moor
were about me; the crag protected my head: the sky was over that.
Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here: I had a vague
dread that wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or
poacher might discover me. If a gust of wind swept the waste, I
looked up, fearing it was the rush of a bull; if a plover whistled,
I imagined it a man. Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however,
and calmed by the deep silence that reigned as evening declined at
nightfall, I took confidence. As yet I had not thought; I had only
listened, watched, dreaded; now I regained the faculty of
reflection.
What was I to do? Where to go? Oh, intolerable questions, when I
could do nothing and go nowhere!--when a long way must yet be
measured by my weary, trembling limbs before I could reach human
habitation--when cold charity must be entreated before I could get a
lodging: reluctant sympathy importuned, almost certain repulse
incurred, before my tale could be listened to, or one of my wants
relieved!
I touched the heath, it was dry, and yet warm with the beat of the
summer day. I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star
twinkled just above the chasm ridge. The dew fell, but with
propitious softness; no breeze whispered. Nature seemed to me
benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I,
who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult,
clung to her with filial fondness. To-night, at least, I would be
her guest, as I was her child: my mother would lodge me without
money and without price. I had one morsel of bread yet: the
remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed through at noon
with a stray penny--my last coin. I saw ripe bilberries gleaming
here and there, like jet beads in the heath: I gathered a handful
and ate them with the bread. My hunger, sharp before, was, if not
satisfied, appeased by this hermit's meal. I said my evening
prayers at its conclusion, and then chose my couch.
Beside the crag the heath was very deep: when I lay down my feet
were buried in it; rising high on each side, it left only a narrow
space for the night-air to invade. I folded my shawl double, and
spread it over me for a coverlet; a low, mossy swell was my pillow.
Thus lodged, I was not, at least--at the commencement of the night,
cold.
My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it.
It plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven
chords. It trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom; it bemoaned him
with bitter pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing; and,
impotent as a bird with both wings broken, it still quivered its
shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him.
Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night
was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too
serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is
everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works
are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the
unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course,
that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His
omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester.
Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky-way.
Remembering what it was--what countless systems there swept space
like a soft trace of light--I felt the might and strength of God.
Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I
grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it
treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life
was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe; he was
God's, and by God would he be guarded. I again nestled to the
breast of the hill; and ere long in sleep forgot sorrow.
But next day, Want came to me pale and bare. Long after the little
birds had left their nests; long after bees had come in the sweet
prime of day to gather the heath honey before the dew was dried--
when the long morning shadows were curtailed, and the sun filled
earth and sky--I got up, and I looked round me.
What a still, hot, perfect day! What a golden desert this spreading
moor! Everywhere sunshine. I wished I could live in it and on it.
I saw a lizard run over the crag; I saw a bee busy among the sweet
bilberries. I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard,
that I might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter here.
But I was a human being, and had a human being's wants: I must not
linger where there was nothing *****pply them. I rose; I looked
back at the bed I had left. Hopeless of the future, I wished but
this--that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul
of me while I slept; and that this weary frame, absolved by death
from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and
mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness. Life, however,
was yet in my possession, with all its requirements, and pains, and
responsibilities. The burden must be carried; the want provided
for; the suffering endured; the responsibility fulfilled. I set
out.
Whitcross regained, I followed a road which led from the sun, now
fervent and high. By no other circumstance had I will to decide my
choice. I walked a long time, and when I thought I had nearly done
enough, and might conscientiously yield to the fatigue that almost
overpowered me--might relax this forced action, and, sitting down on
a stone I saw near, submit resistlessly to the apathy that clogged
heart and limb--I heard a bell chime--a church bell.
I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the
romantic hills, whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an
hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a spire. All the valley at my right
hand was full of pasture-fields, and cornfields, and wood; and a
glittering stream ran zig-zag through the varied shades of green,
the mellowing grain, the sombre woodland, the clear and sunny lea.
Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to the road before me, I saw a
heavily-laden waggon labouring up the hill, and not far beyond were
two cows and their drover. Human life and human labour were near.
I must struggle on: strive to live and bend to toil like the rest.
About two o'clock p.m. I entered the village. At the bottom of its
one street there was a little shop with some cakes of bread in the
window. I coveted a cake of bread. With that refreshment I could
perhaps regain a degree of energy: without it, it would be
difficult to proceed. The wish to have some strength and some
vigour returned to me as soon as I was amongst my fellow-beings. I
felt it would be degrading to faint with hunger on the causeway of a
hamlet. Had I nothing about me I could offer in exchange for one of
these rolls? I considered. I had a small silk handkerchief tied
round my throat; I had my gloves. I could hardly tell how men and
women in extremities of destitution proceeded. I did not know
whether either of these articles would be accepted: probably they
would not; but I must try.
I entered the shop: a woman was there. Seeing a respectably-
dressed person, a lady as she supposed, she came forward with
civility. How could she serve me? I was seized with shame: my
tongue would not utter the request I had prepared. I dared not
offer her the half-worn gloves, the creased handkerchief: besides,
I felt it would be absurd. I only begged permission to sit down a
moment, as I was tired. Disappointed in the expectation of a
customer, she coolly acceded to my request. She pointed to a seat;
I sank into it. I felt sorely urged to weep; but conscious how
unseasonable such a manifestation would be, I restrained it. Soon I
asked her "if there were any dressmaker or plain-workwoman in the
village?"
"Yes; two or three. Quite as many as there was employment for."
I reflected. I was driven to the point now. I was brought face to
face with Necessity. I stood in the position of one without a
resource, without a friend, without a coin. I must do something.
What? I must apply somewhere. Where?
"Did she know of any place in the neighbourhood where a servant was
wanted?"
"Nay; she couldn't say."
"What was the chief trade in this place? What did most of the
people do?"
"Some were farm labourers; a good deal worked at Mr. Oliver's
needle-factory, and at the foundry."
"Did Mr. Oliver employ women?"
"Nay; it was men's work."
"And what do the women do?"
"I knawn't," was the answer. "Some does one thing, and some
another. Poor folk mun get on as they can."
She seemed to be tired of my questions: and, indeed, what claim had
I to importune her? A neighbour or two came in; my chair was
evidently wanted. I took leave.
I passed up the street, looking as I went at all the houses to the
right hand and to the left; but I could discover no pretext, nor see
an inducement to enter any. I rambled round the hamlet, going
sometimes to a little distance and returning again, for an hour or
more. Much exhausted, and suffering greatly now for want of food, I
turned aside into a lane and sat down under the hedge. Ere many
minutes had elapsed, I was again on my feet, however, and again
searching something--a resource, or at least an informant. A pretty
little house stood at the top of the lane, with a garden before it,
exquisitely neat and brilliantly blooming. I stopped at it. What
business had I to approach the white door or touch the glittering
knocker? In what way could it possibly be the interest of the
inhabitants of that dwelling to serve me? Yet I drew near and
knocked. A mild-looking, cleanly-attired young woman opened the
door. In such a voice as might be expected from a hopeless heart
and fainting frame--a voice wretchedly low and faltering--I asked if
a servant was wanted here?
Gió nhớ gì ngẩn ngơ ngoài hiên
Mưa nhớ gì thì thầm ngoài hiên

​

"No," said she; "we do not keep a servant."
"Can you tell me where I could get employment of any kind?" I
continued. "I am a stranger, without acquaintance in this place. I
want some work: no matter what."
But it was not her business to think for me, or to seek a place for
me: besides, in her eyes, how doubtful must have appeared my
character, position, tale. She shook her head, she "was sorry she
could give me no information," and the white door closed, quite
gently and civilly: but it shut me out. If she had held it open a
little longer, I believe I should have begged a piece of bread; for
I was now brought low.
I could not bear to return to the sordid village, where, besides, no
prospect of aid was visible. I should have longed rather to deviate
to a wood I saw not far off, which appeared in its thick shade to
offer inviting shelter; but I was so sick, so weak, so gnawed with
nature's cravings, instinct kept me roaming round abodes where there
was a chance of food. Solitude would be no solitude--rest no rest--
while the vulture, hunger, thus sank beak and talons in my side.
I drew near houses; I left them, and came back again, and again I
wandered away: always repelled by the consciousness of having no
claim to ask--no right to expect interest in my isolated lot.
Meantime, the afternoon advanced, while I thus wandered about like a
lost and starving dog. In crossing a field, I saw the church spire
before me: I hastened towards it. Near the churchyard, and in the
middle of a garden, stood a well-built though small house, which I
had no doubt was the parsonage. I remembered that strangers who
arrive at a place where they have no friends, and who want
employment, sometimes apply to the clergyman for introduction and
aid. It is the clergyman's function to help--at least with advice--
those who wished to help themselves. I seemed to have something
like a right to seek counsel here. Renewing then my courage, and
gathering my feeble remains of strength, I pushed on. I reached the
house, and knocked at the kitchen-door. An old woman opened: I
asked was this the parsonage?
"Yes."
"Was the clergyman in?"
"No."
"Would he be in soon?"
"No, he was gone from home."
"To a distance?"
"Not so far--happen three mile. He had been called away by the
sudden death of his father: he was at Marsh End now, and would very
likely stay there a fortnight longer."
"Was there any lady of the house?"
"Nay, there was naught but her, and she was housekeeper;" and of
her, reader, I could not bear to ask the relief for want of which I
was sinking; I could not yet beg; and again I crawled away.
Once more I took off my handkerchief--once more I thought of the
cakes of bread in the little shop. Oh, for but a crust! for but one
mouthful to allay the pang of famine! Instinctively I turned my
face again to the village; I found the shop again, and I went in;
and though others were there besides the woman I ventured the
request--"Would she give me a roll for this handkerchief?"
She looked at me with evident suspicion: "Nay, she never sold stuff
i' that way."
Almost desperate, I asked for half a cake; she again refused. "How
could she tell where I had got the handkerchief?" she said.
"Would she take my gloves?"
"No! what could she do with them?"
Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say
there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but
at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I
allude: the moral degradation, blent with the physical suffering,
form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on.
I blamed none of those who repulsed me. I felt it was what was to
be expected, and what could not be helped: an ordinary beggar is
frequently an object of suspicion; a well-dressed beggar inevitably
so. To be sure, what I begged was employment; but whose business
was it to provide me with employment? Not, certainly, that of
persons who saw me then for the first time, and who knew nothing
about my character. And as to the woman who would not take my
handkerchief in exchange for her bread, why, she was right, if the
offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable. Let me
condense now. I am sick of the subject.
A little before dark I passed a farm-house, at the open door of
which the farmer was sitting, eating his supper of bread and cheese.
I stopped and said -
"Will you give me a piece of bread? for I am very hungry." He cast
on me a glance of surprise; but without answering, he cut a thick
slice from his loaf, and gave it to me. I imagine he did not think
I was a beggar, but only an eccentric sort of lady, who had taken a
fancy to his brown loaf. As soon as I was out of sight of his
house, I sat down and ate it.
I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sought it in the
wood I have before alluded to. But my night was wretched, my rest
broken: the ground was damp, the air cold: besides, intruders
passed near me more than once, and I had again and again to change
my quarters; no sense of safety or tranquillity befriended me.
Towards morning it rained; the whole of the following day was wet.
Do not ask me, reader, to give a minute account of that day; as
before, I sought work; as before, I was repulsed; as before, I
starved; but once did food pass my lips. At the door of a cottage I
saw a little girl about to throw a mess of cold porridge into a pig
trough. "Will you give me that?" I asked.
She stared at me. "Mother!" she exclaimed, "there is a woman wants
me to give her these porridge."
"Well lass," replied a voice within, "give it her if she's a beggar.
T pig doesn't want it."
The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it
ravenously.
As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridle-path,
which I had been pursuing an hour or more.
"My strength is quite failing me," I said in a soliloquy. "I feel I
cannot go much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night?
While the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched
ground? I fear I cannot do otherwise: for who will receive me?
But it will be very dreadful, with this feeling of hunger,
faintness, chill, and this sense of desolation--this total
prostration of hope. In all likelihood, though, I should die before
morning. And why cannot I reconcile myself to the prospect of
death? Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life? Because I
know, or believe, Mr. Rochester is living: and then, to die of want
and cold is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively. Oh,
Providence! sustain me a little longer! Aid!--direct me!"
My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape. I saw I
had strayed far from the village: it was quite out of sight. The
very cultivation surrounding it had disappeared. I had, by cross-
ways and by-paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland; and
now, only a few fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the heath
from which they were scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and the
dusky hill.
"Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented
road," I reflected. "And far better that crows and ravens--if any
ravens there be in these regions--should pick my flesh from my
bones, than that they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and
moulder in a pauper's grave."
To the hill, then, I turned. I reached it. It remained now only to
find a hollow where I could lie down, and feel at least hidden, if
not secure. But all the surface of the waste looked level. It
showed no variation but of tint: green, where rush and moss
overgrew the marshes; black, where the dry soil bore only heath.
Dark as it was getting, I could still see these changes, though but
as mere alternations of light and shade; for colour had faded with
the daylight.
My eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the moor-edge,
vanishing amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in
among the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up. "That is an
ignis fatuus," was my first thought; and I expected it would soon
vanish. It burnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding nor
advancing. "Is it, then, a bonfire just kindled?" I questioned. I
watched to see whether it would spread: but no; as it did not
diminish, so it did not enlarge. "It may be a candle in a house," I
then conjectured; "but if so, I can never reach it. It is much too
far away: and were it within a yard of me, what would it avail? I
should but knock at the door to have it shut in my face."
And I sank down where I stood, and hid my face against the ground.
I lay still a while: the night-wind swept over the hill and over
me, and died moaning in the distance; the rain fell fast, wetting me
afresh to the skin. Could I but have stiffened to the still frost--
the friendly numbness of death--it might have pelted on; I should
not have felt it; but my yet living flesh shuddered at its chilling
influence. I rose ere long.
The light was yet there, shining dim but constant through the rain.
I tried to walk again: I dragged my exhausted limbs slowly towards
it. It led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog, which would
have been impassable in winter, and was splashy and shaking even
now, in the height of summer. Here I fell twice; but as often I
rose and rallied my faculties. This light was my forlorn hope: I
must gain it.
Having crossed the marsh, I saw a trace of white over the moor. I
approached it; it was a road or a track: it led straight up to the
light, which now beamed from a sort of knoll, amidst a clump of
trees--firs, apparently, from what I could distinguish of the
character of their forms and foliage through the gloom. My star
vanished as I drew near: some obstacle had intervened between me
and it. I put out my hand to feel the dark mass before me: I
discriminated the rough stones of a low wall--above it, something
like palisades, and within, a high and prickly hedge. I groped on.
Again a whitish object gleamed before me: it was a gate--a wicket;
it moved on its hinges as I touched it. On each side stood a sable
bush-holly or yew.
Entering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house
rose to view, black, low, and rather long; but the guiding light
shone nowhere. All was obscurity. Were the inmates retired to
rest? I feared it must be so. In seeking the door, I turned an
angle: there shot out the friendly gleam again, from the lozenged
panes of a very small latticed window, within a foot of the ground,
made still smaller by the growth of ivy or some other creeping
plant, whose leaves clustered thick over the portion of the house
wall in which it was set. The aperture was so screened and narrow,
that curtain or shutter had been deemed unnecessary; and when I
stooped down and put aside the spray of foliage shooting over it, I
could see all within. I could see clearly a room with a sanded
floor, clean scoured; a dresser of walnut, with pewter plates ranged
in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a glowing peat-fire.
I could see a clock, a white deal table, some chairs. The candle,
whose ray had been my beacon, burnt on the table; and by its light
an elderly woman, somewhat rough-looking, but scrupulously clean,
like all about her, was knitting a stocking.
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