Chapter 27
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Some time iernoon I raised my head, and looking round and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its dee 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 ot 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 wao be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and sce, turyrant, 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 yht eye; yourself cut off yht 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 siing from excitement and inanitioher 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 beeo ask how I was, or to invite me to e down: not even little Adèle had tapped at the door; not even Mrs. Fairfax had sought me. “Friends always fet those whom fortune forsakes,” I murmured, as I uhe 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 ay chamber threshold.
“You e 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 e and upbraided me with vehemence. You are passionate. I expected a se of some kind. I repared for the hot rain of tears; only I wahem 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 reproaothing 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 otle 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 five me?”
Reader, I fave 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 suged love in his whole look and mien—I fave him all: yet not in words, not outwardly; only at my heart’s core.
“You know I am a sdrel, Jane?” ere long he inquired wistfully— w, I suppose, at my tinued silend tameness, the result rather of weakhan of will.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then tell me so roundly and sharply—don’t spare me.”
“I ot: 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 bee icy cold in my chamber. He put wio 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 crag 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 ot leave him.”
“How are you now, Jane?”
“Much better, sir; I shall be well soon.”
“Taste the wine again, Jane.”
I obeyed him; the the glass oable, 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 aut his aside.
“What!—How is this?” he exclaimed hastily. “Oh, I know! you won’t kiss the husband of Bertha Mason? You sider my arms filled and my embraces appropriated?”
“At any rate, there is her 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 disied 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 say nothing in the first place, you are faint still, and have enough to do to draw your breath; in the sed place, you ot yet ac 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 se: you are thinking how to act—talking you sider 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 io make yourself a plete strao me: to live uhis roof only as Adèle’s governess; if ever I say a friendly word to you, if ever a friendly feeling ines you again to me, you will say,—‘That man had nearly made me his mistress: I must be id ro;’ and id rock you will accly bee.”
I cleared and steadied my voice to reply: “All is ged about me, sir; I must ge too—there is no doubt of that; and to avoid fluctuations of feeling, and tinual bats with recolles and associations, there is only one way—Adèle must have a new governess, sir.”
“Oh, Adèle will go to school—I have settled that already; nor do I mean to torment you with the hideous associations and recolles of Thornfield Hall—this accursed place—this tent of A—this i vault, the ghastliness of livih 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 t you to Thornfield Hall, knowing as I did how it was haunted. I charged them to ceal from you, before I ever saw you, all knowledge of the curse of the place; merely because I feared Adèle never would have a govero 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 uhiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my sce recoil from the arra. 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 i assassination, even of what I most hate.
“cealing the mad-woman’s neighbourhood from you, however, was something like c a child with a cloak and laying it down near a upas-tree: that demon’s viage 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 muoney, and she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby Retreat, to bear her pany a 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 ot 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 siess 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 fine you, and not a strait waistcoat—yrasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this m, 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 me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile iurn; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray nition 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 uhis 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 reminisces, from unwele intrusion—even from falsehood and slander.”
“And take Adèle with you, sir,” I interrupted; “she will be a panion for you.”
“What do you mean, Jane? I told you I would send Adèle to school; and what do I want with a child for a panion, and not my own child,—a French dancer’s bastard? Why do you importune me about her! I say, why do you assign Adèle to me for a panion?”
“You spoke of a retirement, sir; airement and solitude are dull: too dull for you.”
“Solitude! solitude!” he reiterated with irritation. “I see I must e to an explanation. I don’t knohynx-like expression is f in your tenance. You are to share my solitude. Do you uand?”
I shook my head: it required a degree of ce, excited as he was being, even to risk that mute sign of dissent. He had been walking fast about the room, aopped, 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 hit 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 khere would e a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and erouble! By God! I long to exert a fra of Samson’s strength, and break the enta like tow!”
He reenced 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 lise. 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 sed of time—was all I had in which to trol arain 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 inower; a sense of influence, which supported me. The crisis erilous; but not without its charm: such as the Indian, perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his oe. I took hold of his ched hand, loosehe torted 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 take pains to repress them, because I knew he would not like to see me weep. Now, however, I sidered 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 early eio be posed. 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 e. Hush, now, and wipe your eyes.”
His softened voinouhat 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 su at 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 bee 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 trol the wish to drop balm where I had wounded.
“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 live with me, and see me daily, a, 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 Adèle and Thornfield. I must part with you for my whole life: I must begin a ence among strange faces and strange ses.”
“Of course: I told you you should. I pass over the madness about parting from me. You mean you must bee a part of me. As to the e 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 Mediterranean. There you shall live a happy, and guarded, and most i 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 bee frantic.”
His void hand quivered: his large nostrils dilated; his eye blazed: still I dared to speak.
“Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact aowledged this m 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 geempered man—you fet 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 fet she knows nothing of the character of that woman, or of the circumstatending 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, Jahat 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. 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<samp>?</samp> my father was an avaricious, grasping man?”
“I have uood 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 ehat 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 mert, 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, iyle 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 versation with her. She flattered me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and aplishments. 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 pruriehe rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its ission. Her relatives enced me; petitors piqued me; she allured me: a marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was. Oh, I have no respeyself when I think of that act!—an agony of inward pt 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 her modesty, nor benevolenor dour, nor refi 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 uood 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 plete dumb idiot. The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom I ot hate, whilst I abhor all his kindred, because he has some grains of affe in his feeble mind, shown in the tinued i he takes in his wretched sister, and also in a dog-like attat he one), 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 cealment, I should have made them no subject of reproay wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind on, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of beio anything higher, expao anything larger—when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in fort; that kindly versation 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 tinued outbreaks of her violent and unreasoemper, or the vexations of her absurd, tradictory, exag orders—even then I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my repentand disgust i; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt.
“Jane, I will not trouble you with abomiails: some strong words shall express what I have to say. I lived with that stairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were s, 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 oemperate and unchaste.
“My brother ierval was dead, and at the end of the four years my father died too. I was riough 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>.</a> 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 early pity you.”
“Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, whie is justified in hurling ba 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 pt for those who have ehem. But that is not your pity, Ja 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 in my own sight—and to the last I repudiated the ination of her crimes, and wrenched myself from e 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 recolle was then, and is now, inexpressibly odious to me; moreover, I khat while she lived I could never be the husband of another aer 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—(sihe 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 hurries of those climates. Being uo sleep in bed, I got up and opehe 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 ahquake—black clouds were casting up over it; the moon was setting in the waves, broad and red, like a hot on-ball—she threw her last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest. I hysically influenced by the atmosphere and se, and my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein she momentarily mingled my h such a tone of demon-hate, with such language!—no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary thahough two rooms off, I heard every word—the thin partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstru 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 . The sufferings of this mortal state will leave me with the heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul. Of the fanatic’s burniernity I have no fear: there is not a future state worse than this present o me break away, and go home to God!’
“I said this whilst I k down at, and unlocked a trunk which tained a brace of loaded pistols: I mean to shoot myself. I oertaihe iion for a moment; for, not being ihe crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair, which had ihe wish and design of self-destru, ast in a sed.
“A wind fresh from Europe blew over the o 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 uhe dripping e-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 reasohus, Jane—and now listen; for it was true Wisdom that soled 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—a regeion 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 opehus:—
“‘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; fine her with due attendand precautions at Thornfield: then travel yourself to what clime you will, and form what ie you like. That woman, who has so abused your long-suffering, so sullied your name, so ed your honour, so blighted your youth, is not your wife, nor are you her husband. See that she is cared for as her dition demands, and you have done all that God and humanity require of you. Let her identity, her e with yourself, be buried in oblivion: you are bound to impart them to no living being. Place her in safety and fort: shelter her degradation with secrecy, and leave her.’
“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 experiereme disgust of its sequences, and, from the family character and stitution, seeing a hideous future opening to me—I added an urgent charge to keep it secret: and very soon the infamous duct 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 e, he became as anxious to ceal it as myself.
“To England, then, I veyed 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 et 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 selee on whose fidelity dependence could be placed; for her ravings would iably 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 fidence. 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 cure her, and which is io her harassing profession, her vigilance has been more than once lulled and baffled. The lunatic is both ing and malignant; she has never failed to take advantage of her guardian’s temporary lapses; oo secrete the kh 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 sed, she paid that ghastly visit to you. I thank Providence, who watched over you, that she the her fury on your wedding apparel, which perhaps brought back vague reminisces of her own bridal days: but on what might have happened, I ot eo reflect. When I think of the thing which flew at my throat this m, hanging its blad scarlet visage over the 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 ti, a devious through all its lands. My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent woman, whom I could love: a trast to the fury I left at Thornfield—”
“But you could not marry, sir.”
“I had determined and was vihat I could and ought. It was not my inal iion 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 sidered free to love and be loved, I never doubted some woman might be found willing and able to uand 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 wao 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 intermialk: I don’t very well know why.”
“I mean,—What ? How did you proceed? What came of su 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 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 y own society: no circles were closed against me. I sought my ideal of a woman amongst English ladies, French tesses, 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, whinouhe realisation of my dream: but I resently undeserved. You are not to suppose that I desired perfe, 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 ingruous unions—would have asked to marry me. Disappoi 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 panionship of mistresses. The first I chose was e 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, Giata, and a German, Clara; both sidered singularly handsome. What was their beauty to me in a few weeks? Giata was unprincipled and violent: I tired of her in three months. Clara was ho and quiet; but heavy, mindless, and unimpressible: not one whit to my taste. I was glad to give her a suffit sum to set her up in a good line of business, and so get detly rid of her. But, Jane, I see by your face you are not f 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 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 recolle of the time I passed with e, Giata, and Clara.”
I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain inferehat if I were so far tet myself and all the teag that had ever been instilled into me, as—under any pretext—with any justification—through aation—to bee the successor of these pirls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling whiow in his mind desecrated their memory. I did not give utterao this vi: it was enough to feel it. I impressed it on my heart, that it might remaio serve me as aid iime 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 e to the point. January, rid of all mistresses—in a harsh, bitter frame of mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely life— corroded with disappoi, sourly disposed against all men, and especially against all womankind (for I began tard 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 peao 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 prese of what it would be to me; no inward warning that the arbitress of my life—my genius food or evil—waited there in humble guise. I did not know it, eve<bdi>?</bdi>n when, on the occasion of Mesrour’s act, it came up and gravely offered me help. Childish and slender creature! It seemed as if a li 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 seole into my frame. It was well I had learnt that this elf must return to me—that it beloo 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 e home that night, Jahough probably you were not aware that I thought of you or watched for you. The day I observed you—myself unseen—for half-an-hour, while you played with Adèle 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. Adèle 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 oo 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 listeo the sobbing wind, and ag<bdi>藏书网</bdi>ain you paced gently on and dreamed. I think those day visions were not dark: there leasurable illumination in your eye occasionally, a soft excitement in your aspect, which told of no bitter, bilious, hypodriac 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 voirs. Fairfax, speaking to a servant in the hall, wakened you: and how curiously you smiled to and at yourself, Jahere was much sense in your smile: it was very shrewd, and seemed to make light of your own abstra. It seemed to say—‘My fine visions are all very well, but I must not fet 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 arouher black tempests to enter.’ You ran downstairs and demanded of Mrs. Fairfax some occupation: the weekly house ats to make up, or something of that sort, I think it was. I was vexed with you fetting 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 ehe room with a look and air at once shy and indepe: you were quaintly dressed—much as you are now. I made you talk: ere long I found you full of strange trasts. Yarb and manner were restricted by rule; your air was often diffident, and altogether that of one refined by nature, but absolutely uo society, and a good deal afraid of making herself disadvantageously spicuous by some solecism or blunder; yet when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowio your interlocutor’s face: there eion 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 yrim and aster, 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 ot describe. I was at once tent 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 pany 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 hauntihat if I hahe 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 iructible 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 ce I met you, you passed me as soon, and with as little token nition, as was sistent with respect. Your habitual expression in those days, Jane, was a thoughtful look; not despo, 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.
“I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in ylance, and genial in your manner, when you versed: 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 at. I used to enjoy a ce meeting with you, Ja this time: there was a curious hesitation in your manner: you gla me with a slight trouble—a h doubt: you did not know what my caprice might be— whether I was going to play the master aern, 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 reminisces, and these revelations of his feelings only made my work more difficult.
“No, Jane,” he returned: “what y 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 tinued. “After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I truly love—I have found you. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attat. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is ceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my tre and spring of life, s my existence about you, and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.
“It was because I felt and khis, 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 stubborhat exists in your character. I feared early instilled prejudice: I wao have you safe before hazarding fidehis was cowardly: I should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do now—opeo 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 iurn. 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 experieng an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment: full of struggle, blaess, 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 prised my intolerable duty—“Depart!”
“Jane, you uand 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!” reenced he, with a gentlehat 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 embrag me), “do you mean it now?”
“I do.”
“And now?” softly kissing my forehead and cheek.
“I do,” extrig myself from restraint rapidly and pletely.
“Oh, Jahis 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 glao my horrible life when yone. 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 panion 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 o 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 innoce from me? You fling me ba 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 fet me before I fet you.”
“You make me a liar by such language: you sully my honour. I declared I could not ge: you tell me to my face I shall ge soon. And what a distortion in your judgment, what a perversity in your ideas, is proved by your duct! Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than tress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach? for you have her relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me?”
This was true: and while he spoke my very sd reason turraitainst me, and charged me with crime iing him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. “Oh, ply!” it said. “Think of his misery; think of his danger—look at his state whe alone; remember his headlong nature; sider 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; saned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Larinciples are not for the times when there is ation: they are for suents as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stri are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual venience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I ot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I t its throbs. Preceived opinions, foerminations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.”
I did. Mr. Rochester, reading my tenance, 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 i>?９９lｉｂ.t>rpreter—often an unscious, 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 ainful, and my over-taxed strength almost exhausted.
“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? sider that eye: sider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more than ce—with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I ot get at it—the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my e will only let the captive loose. queror 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 e with soft flight ale 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! e, Jane, e!”
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.
“Yoing, Jane?”
“I am going, sir.”
“You are leaving me?”
“Yes.”
“You will not e? You will not be my forter, 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 sent; but remember, you leave me here in anguish. Go up to your own room; think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a glany sufferings—think of me.”
He turned away; he threw himself on his fa 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 gaihe door; but, reader, I walked back—walked back as determinedly as I had retreated. I k 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 kio 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 y heart as I left him. Despair added, “Farewell for ever!”
That night I hought to sleep; but a slumber fell on me as soon as I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the ses 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 tre 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 e— watched with the stra anticipation; as though some word of doom were to be written on her disk. She broke forth as never moo burst from cloud: a hand first peed the sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon, but a white human form shone in the azure, ining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed o 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 es. “It ot be too early to ehe 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 entered the beads of a pearl necklace Mr. Rochester had forced me to accept a few days ago. I left that; it was not mi was the visionary bride’s who had melted in air. The other articles I made up in a parcel; my purse, taining twenty shillings (it was all I had), I put in my pocket: I tied on my straw bo, pinned my shawl, took the parcel and my slippers, which I would not put o, and stole from my room.
“Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax!” I whispered, as I glided past her door. “Farewell, my darling Adèle!” I said, as I glaowards the nursery. No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace her. I had to deceive a fine ear: fht I k 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 walkilessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I listehere 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 noaiting with impatience for day. He would send for me in the m; 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 meically. I sought the key of the side-door i; 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 opehe 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 trary dire to Millcote; a road I had ravelled, but often noticed, and wondered where it led: thither I bent my steps. No refle was to be allowed now: not one glance was to be cast baot even one forward. Not ohought was to be giveher to the past or the future. The first age so heavenly sweet— so deadly sad—that to read one line of it would dissolve my ce 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 laill after sunrise. I believe it was a lovely summer m: I know my shoes, which I had put on when I left the house, were soo with dew. But I looked her to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature. He who is taken out to pass through a fair se to the scaffold, thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the blod 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—watg the sunrise; hoping I should soon e to say I would stay with him and be his. I loo be his; I pao 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 bad be his forter—his pride; his redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin. Oh, that fear of his self-abando—far worse than my abando—how it goaded me! It was a barbed arrow-head in my breast; it tore me when I tried to extract it; it sied me when remembrahrust 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 retrae step. God must have led me on. As to my own will or sce, 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 uhe hedge; and while I sat, I heard wheels, and saw a coae 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 es. 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 the! 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.
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