Chapter 37

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    The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of siderable antiquity, moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood. I had heard of it before. Mr. Rochester often spoke of it, and sometimes went there. His father had purchased the estate for the sake of the game covers. He would have let the house, but could find , in sequence of its ineligible and insalubrious site. Ferhen remained uninhabited and unfurnished, with the exception of some two or three rooms fitted up for the aodation of the squire when he went there in the season to shoot.

    To this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and tinued small peing rain. The last mile I performed on foot, having dismissed the chaise and driver with the double remuion I had promised. Even when within a very short distance of the manor- house, you could see nothing of it, so thid dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood about it. Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter, and passing through them, I found myself at on the twilight of close-rarees. There was a grass-grown track desding the forest aisle between hoar and knotty shafts and under branched arches. I followed it, expeg soon to reach the dwelling; but it stretched on and on, it would far and farther: no sign of habitatirounds was visible.

    I thought I had taken a wrong dire and lost my way. The darkness of natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me. I looked round in search of another road. There was none: all was interwoven stem, nar trunk, dense summer foliage—no opening anywhere.

    I proceeded: at last my ehe trees thinned a little; presently I beheld a railing, then the house—scarce, by this dim light, distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its deg walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a semicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of the forest. The house presewo pointed gables in its front; the windows were latticed and narrow: the front door was narrow too, oep led up to it. The whole looked, as the host of the Rochester Arms had said, “quite a desolate spot.” It was as still as a chur a week-day: the pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound audible in its viage.

    “ there be life here?” I asked.

    Yes, life of some kind there was; for I heard a movement—that narrow front-door was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue from the grange.

    It opened slowly: a figure came out into the twilight and stood oep; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to feel whether it rained. Dusk as it was, I had reised him—it was my master, Edward Fairfax Rochester, and no other.

    I stayed my step, almost my breath, and stood to watch him—to examine him, myself unseen, and alas! to him invisible. It was a suddeing, and one in which rapture was kept well in check by pain. I had no difficulty iraining my voice from exclamation, my step from hasty advance.

    His form was of the same strong and stalwart tour as ever: his port was still erect, his heir was still raven blaor were his features altered or sunk: not in one year’s space, by any sorrow, could his athletic strength be quelled or his vigorous prime blighted. But in his tenance I saw a ge: that looked desperate.? and brooding—that reminded me of some wronged aered wild beast or bird, dangerous to approa his sullehe caged eagle, whose ged eyes cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson.

    And, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocit<samp>..</samp>y?—if you do, you little know me. A soft hope blest with my sorrow that soon I should dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those lips so sternly sealed beh it: but not yet. I would not accost him yet.

    He desded the oep, and advanced slowly and gropingly towards the grass-plat. Where was his daring stride now? Then he paused, as if he knew not which way to turn. He lifted his hand and opened his eyelids; gazed blank, and with a straining effort, on the sky, and toward the amphitheatre of trees: one saw that all to him was void darkness. He stretched his right hand (the left arm, the mutilated one, he kept hidden in his bosom); he seemed to wish by touch to gain an idea of what lay around him: he met but vacy still; for the trees were some yards off where he stood. He relinquished the endeavour, folded his arms, and stood quiet and mute in the rain, now falling fast on his uncovered head. At this moment John approached him from some quarter.

    “Will you take my arm, sir?” he said; “there is a heavy shower ing on: had you not better go in?”

    “Let me alone,” was the answer.

    John withdrew without having observed me. Mr. Rochester now tried to walk about: vainly,—all was too uain. He groped his way back to the house, and, re-entering it, closed the door.

    I now drew near and knocked: John’s wife opened for me. “Mary,” I said, “how are you?”

    She started as if she had seen a ghost: I calmed her. To her hurried “Is it really you, miss, e at this late hour to this lonely place?” I answered by taking her hand; and then I followed her into the kit, where John now sat by a good fire. I explaio them, in few words, that I had heard all which had happened since I left Thornfield, and that I was e to see Mr. Rochester. I asked John to go down to the turn-pike-house, where I had dismissed the chaise, and bring my trunk, which I had left there: and then, while I removed my bo and shawl, I questioned Mary as to whether I could be aodated at the Manor House for the night; and finding that arras to that effect, though difficult, would not be impossible, I informed her I should stay. Just at this moment the parlour-bell rang.

    “When you go in,” said I, “tell your master that a person wishes to speak to him, but do not give my name.”

    “I don’t think he will see you,” she answered; “he refuses everybody.”

    Wheurned, I inquired what he had said. “You are to send in your name and your business,” she replied. She then proceeded to fill a glass with water, and place it on a tray, together with dles.

    “Is that what he rang for?” I asked.

    “Yes: he always has dles brought in at dark, though he is blind.”

    “Give the tray to me; I will carry it in.”

    I took it from her hand: she pointed me out the parlour door. The tray shook as I held it; the water spilt from the glass; my heart struck my ribs loud and fast. Mary opehe door for me, and shut it behind me.

    This parlour looked gloomy: a ed handful of fire burnt low in the grate; and, leaning over it, with his head supported against the high, old-fashioned mantelpiece, appeared the bli of the room. His old dog, Pilot, lay on one side, removed out of the way, and coiled up as if afraid of being iently trodden upon. Pilot pricked up his ears when I came in: then he jumped up with a yelp and a whine, and bouowards me: he almost khe tray from my hands. I set it oable; then patted him, and said softly, “Lie down!” Mr. Rochester turned meically to see what the otion was: but as he saw nothing, he returned and sighed.

    “Give me the water, Mary,” he said.

    I approached him with the now only half-filled glass; Pilot followed me, still excited.

    “What is the matter?” he inquired.

    “Down, Pilot!” I again said. He checked the water on its way to his lips, and seemed to listen: he drank, and put the glass down. “This is you, Mary, is it not?”

    “Mary is i,” I answered.

    He put out his hand with a quick gesture, but not seeing where I stood, he did not touch me. “Who is this? Who is this?”<big>..</big> he demarying, as it seemed, to SEE with those sightless eyes— unavailing and distressing attempt! “Answer me—speak again!” he ordered, imperiously and aloud.

    “Will you have a little more water, sir? I spilt half of what was in the glass,” I said.

    “Who is it? What is it? Who speaks?”

    “Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this evening,” I answered.

    “Great God!—what delusion has e over me? What sweet madness has seized me?”

    “No delusion—no madness: your mind, sir, is to for delusion, your health too sound for frenzy.”

    “And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I ot see, but I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst. Whatever—whoever you are—be perceptible to the touch or I ot live!”

    He groped; I arrested his wandering hand, and priso in both mine.

    “Her very fingers!” he cried; “her small, slight fingers! If so there must be more of her.”

    The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my shoulder—neck—waist—I was entwined and gathered to him.

    “Is it Jane? What is it? This is her shape—this is her size—”

    “And this her voice,” I added. “She is all here: her heart, too. God bless you, sir! I am glad to be so near you again.”

    “Jane Eyre!—Jane Eyre,” was all he said.

    “My dear master,” I answered, “I am Jane Eyre: I have found you out—I am e back to you.”

    “In truth?—in the flesh? My living Jane?”

    “You touch me, sir,—you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold like a corpse, nor vat like air, am I?”

    “My living darling! These are certainly her limbs, and these her features; but I ot be so blest, after all my misery. It is a dream; such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to my heart, as I do now; and kissed her, as thus—ahat she loved me, and trusted that she would not leave me.”

    “Which I never will, sir, from this day.”

    “Never will, says the vision? But I always woke and found it ay mockery; and I was desolate and abandoned—my life dark, lonely, hopeless—my soul athirst and forbidden to drink—my heart famished and o be fed. Gentle, soft dream, ling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before you go—embrace me, Jane.”

    “There, sir—and there!”’

    I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes—I swept his hair from his brow, and kissed that too. He suddenly seemed to arouse himself: the vi of the reality of all this seized him.

    “It is you—is it, Jane? You are e bae then?”

    “I am.”

    “And you do not lie dead in some ditder some stream? And you are not a pining outcast amongst strangers?”

    “No, sir! I am an indepe woman now.”

    “Indepe! What do you mean, Jane?”

    “My uncle in Madeira is dead, and he left me five thousand pounds.”

    “Ah! this is practical—this is real!” he cried: “I should never dream that. Besides, there is that peculiar voice of hers, so animating and piquant, as well as soft: it cheers my withered heart; it puts life into it.—What, Ja! Are you an indepe woman? A rian?”

    “If you won’t let me live with you, I  build a house of my own close up to your door, and you may e and sit in my parlour when you want pany of an evening.”

    “But as you are rich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, friends who will look after you, and not suffer you to devote yourself to a blind lameter like me?”

    “I told you I am indepe, sir, as well as rich: I am my own mistress.”

    “And you will stay with me?”

    “Certainly—unless you object. I will be your neighbour, your nurse, your housekeeper. I find you lonely: I will be your panion—to read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes and hands to you. Cease to look so melancholy, my dear master; you shall not be left desolate, so long as I live.”

    He replied not: he seemed serious—abstracted; he sighed; he half- opened his lips as if to speak: he closed them again. I felt a little embarrassed. Perhaps I had too rashly over-leaped ventionalities; and he, like St. John, saw impropriety in my insiderateness. I had indeed made my proposal from the idea that he wished and would ask me to be his wife: an expectation, not the less certain because unexpressed, had buoyed me up, that he would claim me at once as his own. But no hint to that effect esg him and his tenance being more overcast, I suddenly remembered that I might have been all wrong, and erhaps playing the fool unwittingly; and I begaly to withdraw myself from his arms—but he eagerly snatched me closer.

    “No—no—Jane; you must not go. No—I have touched you, heard you, felt the fort of your presehe sweetness of your solation: I ot give up these joys. I have little left in myself—I must have you. The world may laugh—may call me absurd, selfish—but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengean its frame.”

    “Well, sir, I will stay with you: I have said so.”

    “Yes—but you uand ohing by staying with me; and I uand another. You, perhaps, could make up your mind to be about my hand and chair—to wait on me as a kind little nurse (for you have an affeate heart and a generous spirit, which prompt you to make sacrifices for those you pity), and that ought to suffie no doubt. I suppose I should ertain  fatherly feelings for you: do you think so? e—tell me.”

    “I will think what you like, sir: I am tent to be only your nurse, if you think it better.”

    “But you ot always be my nurse, Ja: you are young—you must marry one day.”

    “I don’t care about being married.”

    “You should care, Ja: if I were what I once was, I would try to make you care—but—a sightless block!”

    He relapsed again into gloom. I, on the trary, became more cheerful, and took fresh ce: these last wave me an insight as to where the difficulty lay; and as it was no difficulty with me, I felt quite relieved from my previous embarrassment. I resumed a livelier vein of versation.

    “It is time some one uook to rehumanise you,” said I, parting his thid long uncut locks; “for I see you are beiamorphosed into a lion, or something of that sort. You have a ‘faux air’ of Nebuezzar in the fields about you, that is certain: your hair reminds me of eagles’ feathers; whether your nails are grown like birds’ claws or not, I have not yet noticed.”

    “On this arm, I have her hand nor nails,” he said, drawing the mutilated limb from his breast, and showing it to me. “It is a mere stump—a ghastly sight! Don’t you think so, Jane?”

    “It is a pity to see it; and a pity to see your eyes—and the scar of fire on your forehead: and the worst of it is, one is in danger of loving you too well for all this; and making too much of you.”

    “I thought you would be revolted, Jane, when you saw my arm, and my cicatrised visage.”

    “Did you? Don’t tell me so—lest I should say something disparaging to your judgment. Now, let me leave you an instant, to make a better fire, and have the hearth swept up.  you tell when there is a good fire?”

    “Yes; with the right eye I see a glow—a ruddy haze.”

    “And you see the dles?”

    “Very dimly—each is a luminous cloud.”

    “ you see me?”

    “No, my fairy: but I am only too thankful to hear and feel you.”

    “When do you take supper?”

    “I ake supper.”

    “But you shall have some to-night. I am hungry: so are you, I daresay, only you fet.”

    Summoning Mary, I soon had the room in more cheerful order: I prepared him, likewise, a fortable repast. My spirits were excited, and with pleasure and ease I talked to him during supper, and for a long time after. There was no harassiraint, no repressing of glee and vivacity with him; for with him I erfect ease, because I knew I suited him; all I said or did seemed either to sole or revive him. Delightful sciousness! It brought to life and light my whole nature: in his presehhly lived; and he lived in mine. Blind as he was, smiles played over his face, joy dawned on his forehead: his lis softened and warmed.

    After supper, he began to ask me many questions, of where I had been, what I had been doing, how I had found him out; but I gave him only very partial replies: it was too late to enter into particulars that night. Besides, I wished to touo deep- thrilling chord—to open no fresh well of emotion in his heart: my sole present aim was to cheer him. Cheered, as I have said, he was: a but by fits. If a moment’s silence broke the versation, he would turless, touch me, then say, “Jane.”

    “You are altogether a human being, Jane? You are certain of that?”

    “I stiously believe so, Mr. Rochester.”

    “Yet how, on this dark and doleful evening, could you so suddenly rise on my loh? I stretched my hand to take a glass of water from a hireling, and it was given me by you: I asked a question, expeg John’s wife to answer me, and your voice spoke at my ear.”

    “Because I had e in, in Mary’s stead, with the tray.”

    “And there is entment in the very hour I am now spending with you. Who  tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on for months past? Doing nothing, expeg nothing; merging night in day; feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out, of hunger when I fot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow, and, at times, a very delirium of desire to behold my Jane again. Yes: for her restoration I longed, far more than for that of my lost sight. How  it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more.”

    A onplace, practical reply, out of the train of his own disturbed ideas, was, I was sure, the best and most reassuring for him in this frame of mind. I passed my finger over his eyebrows, and remarked that they were scorched, and that I would apply something which would make them grow as broad and black as ever.

    “Where is the use of doing me good in any way, benefit spirit, when, at some fatal moment, you will agai me—passing like a shadow, whither and how to me unknown, and for me remaining afterwards undiscoverable?

    “Have you a pocket-b about you, sir?”

    “What for, Jane?”

    “Just to b out this shaggy black mane. I find you rather alarming, when I examine you close at hand: you talk of my being a fairy, but I am sure, you are more like a brownie.”

    “Am I hideous, Jane?”

    “Very, sir: you always were, you know.”

    “Humph! The wiess has not been taken out of you, wherever you have sojourned.”

    “Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a huimes better people; possessed of ideas and views you nev<mark></mark>er eained in your life: quite more refined aed.”

    “Who the deuce have you been with?”

    “If you twist in that way you will make me pull the hair out of your head; and then I think you will cease to eain doubts of my substantiality.”

    “Who have you been with, Jane?”

    “You shall not get it out of me to-night, sir; you must wait till to-morrow; to leave my tale half told, will, you know, be a sort of security that I shall appear at your breakfast table to finish it. By the bye, I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only a glass of water then: I must bring an egg at the least, to say nothing of fried ham.”

    “You mog geling—fairy-born and human-bred! You make me feel as I have not felt these twelve months. If Saul could have had you for his David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the harp.”

    “There, sir, you are redd up and made det. Now I’ll leave you: I have been travelling these last three days, and I believe I am tired. Good night.”

    “Just one word, Jane: were there only ladies in the house where you have been?”

    I laughed and made my escape, still laughing as I ran upstairs. “A good idea!” I thought with glee. “I see I have the means of fretting him out of his melancholy for some time to e.”

    Very early the  m I heard him up and astir, wandering from one room to another. As soon as Mary came down I heard the question: “Is Miss Eyre here?” Then: “Whi did you put her into? Was it dry? Is she up? Go and ask if she wants anything; and when she will e down.”

    I came down as soon as I thought there rospect of breakfast. Entering the room very softly, I had a view of him before he discovered my prese was mournful, io withe subjugation of that vigorous spirit to a corporeal infirmity. He sat in his chair—still, but not at rest: expet evidently; the lines of now habitual sadness marking his stroures. His tenance reminded one of a lamp quenched, waiting to be re-lit— and alas! it was not himself that could now kihe lustre of animated expression: he was depe on another for that office! I had meant to be gay and careless, but the powerlessness of the strong man touched my heart to the quick: still I accosted him with what vivacity I could.

    “It is a bright, sunny m, sir,” I said. “The rain is over and gone, and there is a tender shining after it: you shall have a walk soon.”

    I had wakehe glow: his features beamed.

    “Oh, you are ihere, my skylark! e to me. You are not gone: not vanished? I heard one of your kind an ho, singing high over the wood: but its song had no musie, any more than the rising sun had rays. All the melody oh is trated in my Jaoo my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I  feel is in her presence.”

    The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as if a royal eagle, ed to a perch, should be forced to e a sparrow to bee its purveyor. But I would not be lachrymose: I dashed off the salt drops, and busied myself with preparing breakfast.

    Most of the m ent in the open air. I led him out of the wet and wild wood into some cheerful fields: I described to him how brilliantly green they were; how the flowers and hedges looked refreshed; how sparklingly blue was the sky. I sought a seat for him in a hidden and lovely spot, a dry stump of a tree; nor did I refuse to let him, wheed, place me on his knee. Why should I, when both he and I were happier han apart? Pilot lay beside us: all was quiet. He broke out suddenly while clasping me in his arms—

    “Cruel, cruel deserter! Oh, Jane, what did I feel when I discovered you had fled from Thornfield, and when I could nowhere find you; and, after examining your apartment, ascertaihat you had taken no money, nor anything which could serve as an equivalent! A pearl necklace I had given you lay untouched in its little casket; your trunks were left corded and locked as they had been prepared for the bridal tour. What could my darling do, I asked, left destitute and penniless? And what did she do? Let me hear now.”

    Thus urged, I began the narrative of my experience for the last year. I softened siderably what related to the three days of wandering and starvation, because to have told him all would have been to inflinecessary pain: the little I did say lacerated his faithful heart deeper than I wished.

    I should not have left him thus, he said, without any means of making my way: I should have told him my iion. I should have fided in him: he would never have forced me to be his mistress. Violent as he had seemed in his despair, he, in truth, loved me far too well and too tenderly to stitute himself my tyrant: he would have given me half his fortune, without demanding so much as a kiss iurn, rather than I should have flung myself friendless on the wide world. I had endured, he was certain, more than I had fessed to him.

    “Well, whatever my sufferings had been, they were very short,” I answered: and then I proceeded to tell him how I had been received at Moor House; how I had obtaihe office of sistress, &amp;c. The accession of fortuhe discovery of my relations, followed in due order. Of course, St. John Rivers’ name came in frequently in the progress of my tale. When I had dohat name was immediately taken up.

    “This St. John, then, is your cousin?”

    “Yes.”

    “You have spoken of him often: do you like him?”

    “He was a very good man, sir; I could not help liking him.”

    “A good man. Does that mean a respectable well-ducted man of fifty? Or what does it mean?”

    “St John was only twenty-nine, sir.”

    “‘Jeune encore,’ as the French say. Is he a person of low stature, phlegmatid plain. A person whose goodness sists rather in his guiltlessness of vice, than in his prowess in virtue.”

    “He is untiringly active. Great aed deeds are what he lives to perform.”

    “But his brain? That is probably rather soft? He means well: but you shrug your shoulders to hear him talk?”

    “He talks little, sir: what he does say is ever to the point. His brain is first-rate, I shoul<u>藏书网</u>d think not impressible, but vigorous.”

    “Is he an able man, then?”

    “Truly able.”

    “A thhly educated man?”

    “St. John is an aplished and profound scholar.”

    “His manners, I think, you said are not to your taste?—priggish and parsonic?”

    “I never mentioned his manners; but, unless I had a very bad taste, they must suit it; they are polished, calm, alemanlike.”

    “His appearance,—I fet what description you gave of his appearance;—a sort of raw curate, half strangled with his white neckcloth, and stilted up on his thick-soled high-lows, eh?”

    “St. John dresses well. He is a handsome man: tall, fair, with blue eyes, and a Gre profile.”

    (Aside.) “Damn him!”—(To me.) “Did you like him, Jane?”

    “Yes, Mr. Rochester, I liked him: but you asked me that before.”

    I perceived, of course, the drift of my interlocutor. Jealousy had got hold of him: she stung him; but the sting was salutary: it gave him respite from the gnawing fang of melancholy. I would not, therefore, immediately charm the snake.

    “Perhaps you would rather not sit any longer on my knee, Miss Eyre?” was the  somewhat ued observation.

    “Why not, Mr. Rochester?”

    “The picture you have just drawn is suggestive of a rather too overwhelming trast. Your words have delied very prettily a graceful Apollo: he is present to your imagination,—tall, fair, blue-eyed, and with a Gre profile. Your eyes dwell on a Vul,—a real blacksmith, brown, broad-shouldered: and blind and lame into the bargain.”

    “I hought of it, before; but you certainly are rather like Vul, sir.”

    “Well, you  leave me, ma’am: but before you go” (aained me by a firmer grasp than ever), “you will be pleased just to answer me a question or two.” He paused.

    “What questions, Mr. Rochester?”

    Then followed this cross-examination.

    “St. John made you sistress of Morton before he knew you were his cousin?”

    “Yes.”

    “You would often see him? He would visit the school sometimes?”

    “Daily.”

    “He would approve of your plans, Jane? I know they would be clever, for you are a talented creature!”

    “He approved of them—yes.”

    “He would discover many things in you he could not have expected to find? Some of your aplishments are not ordinary.”

    “I don’t know about that.”

    “You had a little cottage he school, you say: did he ever e there to see you?”

    “Now and then?”

    “Of an evening?”

    “Once or twice.”

    A pause.

    “How long did you reside with him and his sisters after the cousinship was discovered?”

    “Five months.”

    “Did Rivers spend much time with the ladies of his family?”

    “Yes; the back parlour was both his study and ours: he sat he window, and we by the table.”

    “Did he study much?”

    “A good deal.”

    “What?”

    “Hindostanee.”

    “And what did you do meantime?”

    “I learnt German, at first.”

    “Did he teach you?”

    “He did not uand German.”

    “Did he teach you nothing?”

    “A little Hindostanee.”

    “Rivers taught you Hindostanee?”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “And his sisters also?”

    “No.”

    “Only you?”

    “Only me.”

    “Did you ask to learn?”

    “No.”

    “He wished to teach you?”

    “Yes.”

    A sed pause.

    “Why did he wish it? Of what use could Hindostanee be to you?”

    “He intended me to go with him to India.”

    “Ah! here I reach the root of the matter. He wanted you to marry him?”

    “He asked me to marry him.”

    “That is a fi—an impudent iion to vex me.”

    “I beg your pardon, it is the literal truth: he asked me more than once, and was as stiff about urging his point as ever you could be.”

    “Miss Eyre, I repeat it, you  leave me. How often am I to say the same thing? Why do you remaiinaciously perched on my knee, when I have given you notice to quit?”

    “Because I am fortable there.”

    “No, Jane, you are not fortable there, because your heart is not with me: it is with this cousin—this St. John. Oh, till this moment, I thought my little Jane was all mine! I had a belief she loved me even when she left me: that was an atom of sweet in much bitter. Long as we have been parted, hot tears as I have wept over our separation, I hought that while I was m her, she was loving another! But it is useless grieving. Jane, leave me: go and marry Rivers.”

    “Shake me off, then, sir,—push me away, for I’ll not leave you of my own accord.”

    “Jane, I ever like your tone of voice: it still renews hope, it sounds so truthful. When I hear it, it carries me back a year. I fet that you have formed a ie. But I am not a fool—go—”

    “Where must I go, sir?”

    “Your oith the husband you have chosen.”

    “Who is that?”

    “You know—this St. John Rivers.”

    “He is not my husband, nor ever will be. He does not love me: I do not love him. He loves (as he  love, and that is not as you love) a beautiful young lady called Rosamond. He wao marry me only because he thought I should make a suitable missionary’s wife, which she would not have done. He is good and great, but severe; and, for me, cold as an iceberg. He is not like you, sir: I am not happy at his side, nor near him, nor with him. He has no indulgene—no fondness. He sees nothing attractive in me; not even youth—only a few useful mental points.—Then I must leave you, sir, to go to him?”

    I shuddered involuntarily, and g instinctively closer to my blind but beloved master. He smiled.

    “What, Jane! Is this true? Is such really the state of matters between you and Rivers?”

    “Absolutely, sir! Oh, you need not be jealous! I wao tease you a little to make you less sad: I thought anger would be better than grief. But if you wish me to love you, could you but see how much I do love you, you would be proud and tent. All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence for ever.”

    Again, as he kissed me, painful thoughts darkened his aspect. “My scared vision! My crippled strength!” he murmured regretfully.

    I caressed, in order to soothe him. I knew of what he was thinking, and wao speak for him, but dared not. As he turned aside his face a minute, I saw a tear slide from uhe sealed eyelid, and trickle down the manly cheek. My heart swelled.

    “I am er than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield orchard,” he remarked ere long. “And what right would that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?”

    “You are no ruin, sir—no lightning-struck tree: yreen and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop.”

    Again he smiled: I gave him fort.

    “You speak of friends, Jane?” he asked.

    “Yes, of friends,” I answered rather hesitatingly: for I knew I meant more than friends, but could not tell what other word to employ. He helped me.

    “Ah! Jane. But I want a wife.”

    “Do you, sir?”

    “Yes: is it o you?”

    “Of course: you said nothing about it before.”

    “Is it unwele news?”

    “That depends on circumstances, sir—on your choice.”

    “Which you shall make for me, Jane. I will abide by your decision.”

    “Choose then, sir—her who loves you best.”

    “I will at least choose—her i love best. Jane, will you marry me?”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “A poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand?”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “A crippled man, twenty years older than you, whom you will have to wait on?”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “Truly, Jane?”

    “Most truly, sir.”

    “Oh! my darling! God bless you and reward you!”

    “Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life—if ever I thought a good thought—if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer—if ever I wished a righteous wish,—I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I  be oh.”

    “Because you delight in sacrifice.”

    “Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for tent. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value—to press my lips to what I love—to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, theainly I delight in sacrifice.”

    “And to bear with my infirmities, Jao overlook my deficies.”

    “Which are none, sir, to me. I love you better now, when I  really be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when you disdained every part but that of the giver and protector.”

    “Hitherto I have hated to be helped—to be led: heh, I feel I shall hate it no more. I did not like to put my hand into a hireling’s, but it is pleasant to feel it circled by Jane’s little fingers. I preferred utter lonelio the stant attendance of servants; but Jane’s soft ministry will be a perpetual joy. Jane suits me: do I suit her?”

    “To the fi fibre of my nature, sir.”

    “The case being so, we have nothing in the world to wait for: we must be married instantly.”

    He looked and spoke with eagerness: his old impetuosity was rising.

    “We must bee one flesh without any delay, Jahere is but the lice to get—then we marry.”

    “Mr. Rochester, I have just discovered the sun is far deed from its meridian, and Pilot is actually gone home to his dinner. Let me look at your watch.”

    “Fasten it into yirdle, Ja, and keep it henceforward: I have no use for it.”

    “It is nearly four o’clo the afternoon, sir. Don’t you feel hungry?”

    “The third day from this must be our wedding-day, Jane. Never mind fine clothes and jewels, now: all that is not worth a fillip.”

    “The sun has dried up all the rain-drops, sir. The breeze is still: it is quite hot.”

    “Do you know, Jane, I have your little pearl necklace at this moment fastened round my bronze scrag under my cravat? I have worn it sihe day I lost my only treasure, as a memento of her.”

    “We will go home through the wood: that will be the shadiest way.”

    He pursued his own thoughts without heeding me.

    “Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the benefit God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my i flower—breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thie: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. His chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I roud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over tn guidance, as a child does its weakness? Of late, Jane—only—only of late—I began to see and aowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentahe wish for recilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.

    “Some days sinay, I umber them—four; it was last Monday night, a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced frenzy—sorrow, sullenness. I had long had the impression that since I could nowhere find you, you must be dead. Late that night— perhaps it might be between eleven and twelve o’clock—ere I retired to my dreary rest, I supplicated God, that, if it seemed good to Him, I might sooaken from this life, and admitted to that world to e, where there was still hope of rejoining Jane.

    “I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which en: it soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars and only by a vague, luminous haze, khe presence of a moon. I longed for thee, Ja! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I asked of God, at on anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and peace more. That I merited all I endured, I aowledged—that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart’s wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words—‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’”

    “Did you speak these words aloud?”

    “I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought me mad: I pronouhem with such frantiergy.”

    “And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?”

    “Yes; but the time is of no sequence: what followed is the strange point. You will think me superstitious,—some superstition I have in my blood, and always had: heless, this is true— true at least it is that I heard what I now relate.

    “As I exclaimed ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ a voice—I ot tell whehe voice came, but I know whose voice it was—replied, ‘I am ing: wait for me;’ and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words—‘Where are you?’

    “I’ll tell you, if I , the idea, the picture these words opeo my mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express. Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls dull, and dies unreverberating. ‘Where are you?’ seemed spoken amongst mountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have deemed that in some wild, lone se, I and Jane were meeting. In spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in unscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to ine; for those were your ats—as certain as I live—they were yours!”

    Reader, it was on Monday night—near midnight—that I too had received the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to it. I listeo Mr. Rochester’s narrative, but made no disclosure iurn. The ce struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be unicated or discussed. If I told anything, my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer: and that mind, yet from its sufferings too proo gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural. I kept these things then, and pohem in my heart.

    “You ot now wonder,” tinued my master, “that when you rose upon me so uedly last night, I had difficulty in believing you any other than a mere void vision, something that would melt to silend annihilation, as the midnight whisper and mountain echo had melted before. Now, I thank God! I know it to be otherwise. Yes, I thank God!”

    He put me off his knee, rose, and reverently lifting his hat from his brow, and bending his sightless eyes to the earth, he stood in mute devotion. Only the last words of the worship were audible.

    “I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has remembered mercy. I humbly e my Redeemer to give me strength to lead heh a purer life than I have doherto!”

    Theretched his hand out to be led. I took that dear hand, held it a moment to my lips, the pass round my shoulder: being so much lower of stature than he, I served both for his prop and guide. We ehe wood, and wended homeward.

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