Chapter 20
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I had fotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also to let down my window-blind. The sequence was, that when the moon, which was full and bright (for the night was fine), came in her course to that spa the sky opposite my casement, and looked in at me through the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me. Awaking in the dead of night, I opened my eyes on her disk—silver- white and crystal clear. It was beautiful, but too solemn; I half rose, and stretched my arm to draw the curtain.Good God! What a cry!
The night—its siles rest, was rent in twain by a savage, a sharp, a shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield Hall.
My pulse stopped: my heart stood still; my stretched arm aralysed. The cry died, and was not renewed. Indeed, whatever being uttered that fearful shriek could not soo it: not the widest-winged dor on the Andes could, twi succession, send out such a yell from the cloud shrouding his eyrie. The thing delivering such utterance must rest ere it could repeat the effort.
It came out of the third storey; for it passed overhead. And overhead—yes, in the room just above my chamber-ceiling—I now heard a struggle: a deadly o seemed from the noise; and a half-smothered voice shouted—
“Help! help! help!” three times rapidly.
“Will no one e?” it cried; and then, while the staggering and stampi on wildly, I distinguished through plank and plaster:—
“Rochester! Rochester! fod’s sake, e!”
A chamber-door opened: some one ran, or rushed, along the gallery. Aep stamped on the fl above and something fell; and there was silence.
I had put on some clothes, though horror shook all my limbs; I issued from my apartment. The sleepers were all aroused: ejaculations, terrified murmurs sounde<dfn>?99lｉｂ?</dfn>d in every room; door after door unclosed; one looked out and another looked out; the gallery filled. Gentlemen and ladies alike had quitted their beds; and “Oh! what is it?”—“Who is hurt?”—“What has happened?”—“Fetch a light!”—“Is it fire?”—“Are there robbers?”—“Where shall we run?” was demanded fusedly on all hands. But for the moonlight they would have been in plete darkness. They ran to and fro; they crowded together: some sobbed, some stumbled: the fusion was iricable.
“Where the devil is Rochester?” cried el Dent. “I ot find him in his bed.”
“Here! here!” was shouted iurn. “Be posed, all of you: I’m ing.”
And the door at the end of the gallery opened, and Mr. Rochester advanced with a dle: he had just desded from the upper storey. One of the ladies ran to him directly; she seized his arm: it was Miss Ingram.
“What awful event has taken place?” said she. “Speak! let us know the worst at once!”
“But don’t pull me down or strangle me,” he replied: for the Misses Eshton were ging about him now; and the two dowagers, in vast white ers, were bearing down on him like ships in full sail.
“All’s right!—all’s right!” he cried. “It’s a mere rehearsal of Much Ado about Nothing. Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous.”
And dangerous he looked: his black eyes darted sparks. Calming himself by an effort, he added—
“A servant has had the nightmare; that is all. She’s aable, nervous person: she strued her dream into an apparition, or something of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright. Now, then, I must see you all bato your rooms; for, till the house is settled, she ot be looked after. Gentlemen, have the goodo set the ladies the example. Miss Ingram, I am sure you will not fail in eving superiority to idle terrors. Amy and Louisa, return to your s like a pair of doves, as you are. Mesdames” (to the dowagers), “you will take cold to a dead certainty, if you stay in this chill gallery any longer.”
And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and anding, he trived to get them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories. I did not wait to be ordered baine, but retreated unnoticed, as unnoticed I had left it.
Not, however, to go to bed: on the trary, I began and dressed myself carefully. The sounds I had heard after the scream, and the words that had been uttered, had probably been heard only by me; for they had proceeded from the room above mine: but they assured me that it was not a servant’s dream which had thus struck horror through the house; and that the explanation Mr. Rochester had given was merely an iion framed to pacify his guests. I dressed, then, to be ready for emergencies. When dressed, I sat a long time by the window looking out over the silent grounds and silvered fields and waiting for I knew not what. It seemed to me that some event must follow the strange cry, struggle, and call.
No: stillness returned: each murmur and movement ceased gradually, and in about an hour Thornfield Hall was again as hushed as a desert. It seemed that sleep and night had resumed their empire. Meahe moon deed: she was about to set. Not liking to sit in the cold and darkness, I thought I would lie down on my bed, dressed as I was. I left the window, and moved with little noise across the carpet; as I stooped to take off my shoes, a cautious hand tapped low at the door.
“Am I wanted?” I asked.
“Are you up?” asked the voice I expected to hear, viz., my master’s.
“Yes, sir.”
“And dressed?”
“Yes.”
“e out, then, quietly.”
I obeyed. Mr. Rochester stood in the gallery holding a light.
“I want you,” he said: “e this way: take your time, and make no noise.”
My slippers were thin: I could walk the matted floor as softly as a cat. He glided up the gallery and up the stairs, and stopped in the dark, low corridor of the fateful third storey: I had followed and stood at his side.
“Have you a sponge in your room?” he asked in a whisper.
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you any salts—volatile salts? Yes.”
“Go bad fetch both.”
I returned, sought the sponge on the washstand, the salts in my drawer, and once more retraced my steps. He still waited; he held a key in his hand: approag one of the small, black doors, he put it in the lock; he paused, and addressed me again.
“You don’t turn sick at the sight of blood?”
“I think I shall not: I have never been tried yet.”
I felt a thrill while I answered him; but no ess, and no faintness.
“Just give me your hand,” he said: “it will not do to risk a fainting fit.”
I put my fingers into his. “Warm and steady,” was his remark: he turhe key and opehe door.
I saw a room I remembered to have seen before, the day Mrs. Fairfax showed me over the house: it was hung with tapestry; but the tapestry was now looped up in one part, and there was a door apparent, which had then been cealed. This door en; a light sho of the room within: I heard thence a snarling, snatg sound, almost like a dog quarrelling. Mr. Rochester, putting down his dle, said to me, “Wait a minute,” and he went forward to the inner apartment. A shout of laughter greeted his entranoisy at first, and terminating in Grace Poole’s own goblin ha! ha! She then was there. He made some sort ement without speaking, though I heard a low voice address him: he came out and closed the door behind him.
“Here, Jane!” he said; and I walked round to the other side of a large bed, which with its drawn curtains cealed a siderable portion of the chamber. An easy-chair was he bed-head: a man sat in it, dressed with the exception of his coat; he was still; his head leant back; his eyes were closed. Mr. Rochester held the dle over him; I reised in his pale and seemingly lifeless face—the stranger, Mason: I saw too that his linen on one side, and one arm, was almost soaked in blood.
“Hold the dle,” said Mr. Rochester, and I took it: he fetched a basin of water from the washstand: “Hold that,” said he. I obeyed. He took the sponge, dipped it in, and moistehe corpse-like face; he asked for my smelling-bottle, and applied it to the nostrils. Mr. Mason shortly unclosed his eyes; he groaned. Mr. Rochester opehe shirt of the wounded man, whose arm and shoulder were bandaged: he sponged away blood, trig fast down.
“Is there immediate danger?” murmured Mr. Mason.
“Pooh! No—a mere scratch. Don’t be so overe, man: bear up! I’ll fetch a surgeon for you now, myself: you’ll be able to be removed by m, I hope. Jane,” he tinued.
“Sir?”
“I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman, for an hour, or perhaps two hours: you will spohe blood as I do when it returns: if he feels faint, you will put the glass of water on that stand to his lips, and your salts to his nose. You will not speak to him on any pretext—and—Richard, it will be at the peril of your life if you speak to her: open your lips—agitate yourself—and I’ll not answer for the sequences.”
Again the poor man groaned; he looked as if he dared not move; fear, either of death or of something else, appeared almost to paralyse him. Mr. Rochester put the now bloody spoo my hand, and I proceeded to use it as he had done. He watched me a sed, then saying, “Remember!—No versation,” he left the room. I experienced a strange feeling as the key grated in the lock, and the sound of his retreating step ceased to be heard.
Here then I was ihird storey, fastened into one of its mystic cells; night around me; a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes and hands; a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door: yes—that alling—the rest I could bear; but I shuddered at the thought of Grace Poole bursting out upon me.
I must keep to my post, however. I must watch this ghastly tehese blue, still lips forbidden to unclose—these eyes now shut, now opening, now wandering through the room, now fixing on me, and ever glazed with the dulness of horror. I must dip my hand again and again in the basin of blood and water, and wipe away the trig gore. I must see the light of the unsnuffed dle wane on my employment; the shadows darken on the wrought, antique tapestry round me, and grow blader the hangings of the vast old bed, and quiver strangely over the doors of a great et opposite—whose front, divided into twelve panels, bore, in grim design, the heads of the twelve apostles, eaclosed in its separate panel as in a frame; while above them at the top rose an ebon crucifix and a dying Christ.
Acc as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered here lahere, it was now the bearded physi, Luke, that bent his brow; now St. John’s long hair that waved; and anon the devilish face of Judas, that grew out of the panel, and seemed gathering life and threatening a revelation of the arch-traitor—of Satan himself—in his subordinate’s form.
Amidst all this, I had to listen as well as watch: to listen for the movements of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den. But since Mr. Rochester’s visit it seemed spellbound: all the night I heard but three sounds at three long intervals,—a step creak, a momentary renewal of the snarling, e noise, and a deep human groan.
Then my own thoughts worried me. What crime was this that lived inate in this sequestered mansion, and could her be expelled nor subdued by the owner?—what mystery, that broke out now in fire and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night? What creature was it, that, masked in an ordinary woman’s fad shape, uttered the voiow of a mog demon, and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of prey?
And this man I bent over—this onplace, quiet stranger—how had he bee involved in the web of horror? and why had the Fury flown at him? What made him seek this quarter of the house at an untimely season, when he should have been asleep in bed? I had heard Mr. Rochester assign him an apartment below—what brought him here! And why, now, was he so tame uhe violence or treachery done him? Why did he so quietly submit to the cealment Mr. Rochester enforced? Why did Mr. Rochester enforce this cealment? His guest had been ed, his own life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted against; and both attempts he smothered in secred sank in oblivion! ly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous will of the latter held plete sway over the iness of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me of this. It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active energy of the other: whehen had arisen Mr. Rochester’s dismay when he heard of Mr. Mason’s arrival? Why had the mere name of this uing individual—whom his word now sufficed to trol like a child—fallen on him, a few hours since, as a thunderbolt might fall on an oak?
Oh! I could not fet his look and his paleness when ..he whispered: “Jane, I have got a blow—I have got a blow, Jane.” I could not fet how the arm had trembled which he rested on my shoulder: and it was no light matter which could thus bow the resolute spirit and thrill the vigorous frame of Fairfax Rochester.
“When will he e? When will he e?” I cried inwardly, as the night lingered and lingered—as my bleeding patient drooped, moaned, sied: aher day nor aid arrived. I had, again and agaihe water to Mason’s white lips; again and again offered him the stimulating salts: my efforts seemed iual: either bodily or mental suffering, or loss of blood, or all three bined, were fast prostrating his strength. He moaned so, and looked so weak, wild, and lost, I feared he was dying; ant I might not eveo him.
The dle, wasted at last, went out; as it expired, I perceived streaks of grey light edging the window curtains: dawn was then approag. Presently I heard Pilot bark far below, out of his distant kennel in the courtyard: hope revived. Nor was it unwarranted: in five minutes more the gratihe yielding lock, warned me my watch was relieved. It could not have lasted more than two hours: many a week has seemed shorter.
Mr. Rochester entered, and with him the surgeon he had been to fetch.
“Now, Carter, be on the alert,” he said to this last: “I give you but half-an-hour for dressing the wound, fastening the bandages, getting the patient downstairs and all.”
“But is he fit to move, sir?”
“No doubt of it; it is nothing serious; he is nervous, his spirits must be kept up. e, set to work.”
Mr. Rochester drew back the thick curtain, drew up the holland blind, let in all the daylight he could; and I was surprised and cheered to see how far dawn was advanced: what rosy streaks were beginning thten the east. Then he approached Mason, whom the surgeon was already handling.
“Now, my good fellow, how are you?” he asked.
“She’s done for me, I fear,” was the faint reply.
“Not a whit!—ce! This day fht you’ll hardly be a pin the worse of it: you’ve lost a little blood; that’s all Carter, assure him there’s no danger.”
“I do that stiously,” said Carter, who had now uhe bandages; “only I wish I could have got here sooner: he would not have bled so much—but how is this? The flesh on the shoulder is torn as well as cut. This wound was not doh a khere have beeh here!”
“She bit me,” he murmured. “She worried me like a tigress, when Rochester got the knife from her.”
“You should not have yielded: you should have grappled with her at once,” said Mr. Rochester.
“But under such circumstances, what could one do?” returned Mason. “Oh, it was frightful!” he added, shuddering. “And I did not expect it: she looked so quiet at first.”
“I warned you,” was his friend’s answer; “I said—be on yuard when you go near her. Besides, you might have waited till to- morrow, and had me with you: it was mere folly to attempt the interview to-night, and alone.”
“I thought I could have done some good.”
“You thought! you thought! Yes, it makes me impatient to hear you: but, however, you have suffered, and are likely to suffer enough for not taking my advice; so I’ll say no more. Carter—hurry!—hurry! The sun will soon rise, and I must have him off.”
“Directly, sir; the shoulder is just bandaged. I must look to this other wound in the arm: she has had her teeth here too, I think.”
“She sucked the blood: she said she’d drain my heart,” said Mason.
I saw Mr. Rochester shudder: a singularly marked expression of disgust, horror, hatred, ed his tenance almost to distortion; but he only said—
“e, be silent, Richard, and never mind her gibberish: don’t repeat it.”
“I wish I could fet it,” was the answer.
“You will when you are out of the try: when you get back to Spanish Town, you may think of her as dead and buried—or rather, you need not think of her at all.”
“Impossible tet this night!”
“It is not impossible: have some energy, man. You thought you were as dead as a herring two hours since, and you are all alive and talking now. There!—Carter has doh you or nearly so; I’ll make you det in a trice. Jane” (he turo me for the first time since his re-entrance), “take this key: go down into my bedroom, and walk straight forward into my dressing-room: opeop drawer of the wardrobe and take out a shirt and neck- handkerchief: bring them here; and be nimble.”
I went; sought the repository he had mentioned, found the articles named, aurned with them.
“Now,” said he, “go to the other side of the bed while I order his toilet; but don’t leave the room: you may be wanted again.”
I retired as directed.
“Was anybody stirring below when you went down, Jane?” inquired Mr. Rochester presently.
“No, sir; all was very still.”
“We shall get you off ily, Dick: and it will be better, both for your sake, and for that of the poor creature in yonder. I have striven long to avoid exposure, and I should not like it to e at last. Here, Carter, help him on with his waist-coat. Where did you leave your furred cloak? You ’t travel a mile without that, I know, in this damned cold climate. In your room?—Jane, run down to Mr. Mason’s room,—the o mine,—ach a cloak you will see there.”
Again I ran, and agaiurned, bearing an immense mantle lined and edged with fur.
“Now, I’ve another errand for you,” said my untiring master; “you must away to my room again. What a mercy you are shod with velvet, Jane!—a clod-hopping messenger would never do at this juncture. You must open the middle drawer of my toilet-table and take out a little phial and a little glass you will find there,—quick!”
I flew thither and back, bringing the desired vessels.
“That’s well! Now, doctor, I shall take the liberty of administering a dose myself, on my own responsibility. I got this cordial at Rome, of an Italian charlatan—a fellow you would have kicked, Carter. It is not a thing to be used indiscriminately, but it is good upon occasion: as now, for instance. Jane, a little water.”
He held out the tiny glass, and I half filled it from the water- bottle on the washstand.
“That will do;—now wet the lip of the phial.”
I did so; he measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid, and prese to Mason.
“Drink, Richard: it will give you the heart you lack, for an hour or so.”
“But will it hurt me?—is it inflammatory?”
“Drink! drink! drink!”
Mr. Mason obeyed, because it was evidently useless to resist. He was dressed now: he still looked pale, but he was no lory and sullied. Mr. Rochester let him sit three minutes after he had swallowed the liquid; he then took his arm—
“Now I am sure you get on your feet,” he said—“try.”
The patient rose.
“Carter, take him uhe other shoulder. Be of good cheer, Richard; step out—that’s it!”
“I do feel better,” remarked Mr. Mason.
“I am sure you do. Now, Jarip on before us away to the backstairs; unbolt the side-passage door, ahe driver of the post-chaise you will see in the yard—or just outside, for I told him not to drive his rattling wheels over the pavement—to be ready; we are ing: and, Jane, if any one is about, e to the foot of the stairs and hem.”
It was by this time half-past five, and the sun was on the point of rising; but I found the kit still dark and silent. The side- passage door was fastened; I ope with as little noise as possible: all the yard was quiet; but the gates stood wide open, and there ost-chaise, with horses ready harnessed, and driver seated on the box, stationed outside. I approached him, and said the gentlemen were ing; he hen I looked carefully round and listehe stillness of early m slumbered everywhere; the curtains were yet drawhe servants’ chamber windows; little birds were just twittering in the blossom-blanched orchard trees, whose boughs drooped like white garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard; the carriage horses stamped from time to time in their closed stables: all else was still.
The gentlemen noeared. Mason, supported by Mr. Rochester and the surgeon, seemed to walk with tolerable ease: they assisted him into the chaise; Carter followed.
“Take care of him,” said Mr. Rochester to the latter, “and keep him at your house till he is quite well: I shall ride over in a day or two to see how he gets on. Richard, how is it with you?”
“The fresh air revives me, Fairfax.”
“Leave the window open on his side, Carter; there is no wind—good- bye, Dick.”
“Fairfax—”
“Well what is it?”
“Let her be taken care of; let her be treated as tenderly as may be: let her—” he stopped and burst into tears.
“I do my best; and have do, and will do it,” was the answer: he shut up the chaise door, and the vehicle drove away.
“Yet would to God there was an end of all this!” added Mr. Rochester, as he closed and barred the heavy yard-gates.
This done, he moved with slow step and abstracted air towards a door in the wall b the orchard. I, supposing he had doh me, prepared to return to the house; again, however, I heard him call “Jane!” He had opened feel portal and stood at it, waiting for me.
“e where there is some freshness, for a few moments,” he said; “that house is a mere dungeon: don’t you feel it so?”
“It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir.”
“The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes,” he answered; “and you see it through a charmed medium: you ot dis that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now here” (he poio the leafy enclosure we had entered) “all is real, sweet, and pure.”
He strayed down a walk edged with box, with apple trees, pear trees, and cherry trees on one side, and a border oher full of all sorts of old-fashioned flowers, stocks, sweet-williams, primroses, pansies, mingled with southernwood, sweet-briar, and various fragrant herbs. They were fresh now as a succession of April showers and gleams, followed by a lovely spring m, could make them: the sun was just entering the dappled east, and his light illumihe wreathed and dewy orchard trees and shone down the quiet walks uhem.
“Jane, will you have a flower?”
He gathered a half-blown rose, the first on the bush, and offered it to me.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Do you like this sunrise, Jahat sky with its high and light clouds which are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm—this placid and balmly atmosphere?”
“I do, very much.”
“You have passed a strange night, Jane.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And it has made you look pale—were you afraid when I left you aloh Mason?”
“I was afraid of some one ing out of the inner room.”
“But I had fastehe door—I had the key in my pocket: I should have been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb—my pet lamb—so near a wolf’s den, unguarded: you were safe.”
“Will Grace Poole live here still, sir?”
“Oh yes! don’t trouble your head about her—put the thing out of your thoughts.”
“Yet it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays.”
“Never fear—I will take care of myself.”
“Is the danger you apprehended last night gone by now, sir?”
“I ot vouch for that till Mason is out of England: nor eveo live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crad spue fire any day.”
“But Mr. Mason seems a man easily led. Your influence, sir, is evidently potent with him: he will never set you at defiance or wilfully injure you.”
“Oh, no! Mason will not defy me; nor, knowing it, wbbr></abbr>ill he hurt me— but, uionally, he might in a moment, by one careless word, deprive me, if not of life, yet for ever of happiness.”
“Tell him to be cautious, sir: let him know what you fear, and show him how to avert the danger.”
He laughed sardonically, hastily took my hand, and as hastily threw it from him.
“If I could do that, simpleton, where would the danger be? Annihilated in a moment. Ever since I have known Mason, I have only had to say to him ‘Do that,’ and the thing has been done. But I ot give him orders in this case: I ot say ‘Beware of harming me, Richard;’ for it is imperative that I should keep him ignorant that harm to me is possible. Now you look puzzled; and I will puzzle you further. You are my little friend, are you not?”
“I like to serve you, sir, and to obey you in all that is right.”
“Precisely: I see you do. I see genuine te in yait and mien, your eye and face, when you are helping me and pleasing me—w for me, and with me, in, as you characteristically say, ‘all that is right:’ for if I bid you do what you thought wrong, there would be no light-footed running, -handed alacrity, no lively gland animated plexion. My friend would then turn to me, quiet and pale, and would say, ‘No, sir; that is impossible: I ot do it, because it is wrong;’ and would bee immutable as a fixed star. Well, you too have power over me, and may injure me: yet I dare not show you where I am vulnerable, lest, faithful and friendly as you are, you should transfix me at once.”
“If you have no more to fear from Mr. Mason than you have from me, sir, you are very safe.”
“God grant it may be so! Here, Jane, is an arbour; sit down.”
The arbour was an ar the wall, lined with ivy; it tained a rustic seat. Mr. Rochester took it, leaving room, however, for me: but I stood before him.
“Sit,” he said; “the bench is long enough for two. You don’t hesitate to take a place at my side, do you? Is that wrong, Jane?”
I answered him by assuming it: to refuse would, I felt, have been unwise.
“Now, my little friend, while the sun drinks the dew—while all the flowers in this old garden awake and expand, and the birds fetch their young ones’ breakfast out of the Thornfield, and the early bees do their first spell of work—I’ll put a case to you, whiust endeavour to suppose your own: but first, look at me, and tell me you are at ease, and not fearing that I err iaining you, or that you err in staying.”
“No, sir; I am tent.”
“Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy:- suppose you were no lirl well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from childhood upwards; imagine yourself in a remote fn land; ceive that you there it a capital error, no matter of what nature or from what motives, but one whose sequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence. Mind, I don’t say a crime; I am not speaking of shedding of blood or any uilty act, which might make the perpetrator ameo the law: my word is error. The results of what you have done bee in time to you utterly insupportable; you take measures to obtain relief: unusual measures, but her unlawful nor culpable. Still you are miserable; for hope has quitted you on the very fines of life: your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which you feel will not leave it till the time of setting. Bitter and base associations have bee the sole food of your memory: you wander here and there, seeki in exile: happiness in pleasure—I mean iless, sensual pleasure—such as dulls intelled blights feeling. Heart-weary and soul-withered, you e home after years of voluntary banishment: you make a new acquaintance—how or where no matter: you find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never before entered; and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint. Such society revives, regees: you feel better days e back—higher wishes, purer feelings; you desire to reence your life, and to spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of —a mere ventional impediment whieither your sce sanctifies nor your judgment approves?”
He paused for an answer: and what was I to say? Oh, for some good spirit to suggest a judicious and satisfactory response! Vain aspiration! The west wind whispered in the ivy round me; but le Ariel borrowed its breath as a medium of speech: the birds sang iree-tops; but their song, however sweet, was inarticulate.
Again Mr. Rochester propounded his query:
“Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking aant, man justified in daring the world’s opinion, in order to atta for ever this gentle, gracious, genial strahereby seg his own peaind and regeion of life?”
“Sir,” I answered, “a wanderer’s repose or a sinner’s reformation should never depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die; philosophers falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if any one you know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals for strength to amend and solace to heal.”
“But the instrument—the instrument! God, who does the work, ordains the instrument. I have myself—I tell it you without parable—been a worldly, dissipated, restless man; and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in—”
He paused: the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling. I almost wohey did not check their songs and whispers to catch the suspended revelation; but they would have had to wait many minutes—so long was the silence protracted. At last I looked up at the tardy speaker: he was looking eagerly at me.
“Little friend,” said he, in quite a ged tone—while his face ged too, losing all its softness and gravity, and being harsh and sarcastic—“you have noticed my tender pent for Miss Ingram: don’t you think if I married her she would regee me with a vengeance?”
He got up instantly, went quite to the other end of the walk, and when he came back he was humming a tune.
“Jane, Jane,” said he, stopping befor<mark>藏书网</mark>e me, “you are quite pale with yils: don’t you curse me for disturbing your rest?”
“Curse you? No, sir.”
“Shake hands in firmation of the word. What cold fingers! They were warmer last<mark></mark> night when I touched them at the door of the mysterious chamber. Jane, when will you watch with me again?”
“Whenever I be useful, sir.”
“For instahe night before I am married! I am sure I shall not be able to sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me pany? To you I talk of my lovely one: for now you have seen her and know her.”
“Yes, sir.”
“She’s a rare one, is she not, Jane?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A strapper—a real strapper, Jane: big, brown, and buxom; with hair just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had. Bless me! there’s Dent and Lynn iables! Go in by the shrubbery, through that wicket.”
As I went one way, he went another, and I heard him in the yard, saying cheerfully—
“Mason got the start of you all this m; he was gone before sunrise: I rose at four to see him off.”
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