CHAPTER XXVII

Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and seeing the
western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I asked, “What am I to
do?”

But the answer my mind gave—“Leave Thornfield at once”—was so prompt, so dread,
that I stopped my ears. I said I could not bear such words now. “That I am not
Edward Rochester’s bride is the least part of my woe,” I alleged: “that I have
wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a
horror I could bear and master; but that I must leave him decidedly, instantly,
entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it.”

But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold that I
should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak that I
might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and
Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she
had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm
of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.

“Let me be torn away, then” I cried. “Let another help me!”

“No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall yourself
pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand: your heart shall be
the victim, and you the priest to transfix it.”

I rose up suddenly, terror-struck at the solitude which so ruthless a judge
haunted,—at the silence which so awful a voice filled. My head swam as I stood
erect. I perceived that I was sickening from excitement and inanition; neither
meat nor drink had passed my lips that day, for I had taken no breakfast. And,
with a strange pang, I now reflected that, long as I had been shut up here, no
message had been sent to ask how I was, or to invite me to come down: not even
little Adèle had tapped at the door; not even Mrs. Fairfax had sought me.
“Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes,” I murmured, as I undrew
the bolt and passed out. I stumbled over an obstacle: my head was still dizzy,
my sight was dim, and my limbs were feeble. I could not soon recover myself. I
fell, but not on to the ground: an outstretched arm caught me. I looked up—I
was supported by Mr. Rochester, who sat in a chair across my chamber threshold.

“You come out at last,” he said. “Well, I have been waiting for you long, and
listening: yet not one movement have I heard, nor one sob: five minutes more of
that death-like hush, and I should have forced the lock like a burglar. So you
shun me?—you shut yourself up and grieve alone! I would rather you had come and
upbraided me with vehemence. You are passionate: I expected a scene of some
kind. I was prepared for the hot rain of tears; only I wanted them to be shed
on my breast: now a senseless floor has received them, or your drenched
handkerchief. But I err: you have not wept at all! I see a white cheek and a
faded eye, but no trace of tears. I suppose, then, your heart has been weeping
blood?

“Well, Jane! not a word of reproach? Nothing bitter—nothing poignant? Nothing
to cut a feeling or sting a passion? You sit quietly where I have placed you,
and regard me with a weary, passive look.

“Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one little ewe
lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread and drank of his
cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles,
he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you
ever forgive me?”

Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot. There was such deep
remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly energy in his
manner; and besides, there was such unchanged love in his whole look and mien—I
forgave him all: yet not in words, not outwardly; only at my heart’s core.

“You know I am a scoundrel, Jane?” ere long he inquired wistfully—wondering, I
suppose, at my continued silence and tameness, the result rather of weakness
than of will.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then tell me so roundly and sharply—don’t spare me.”

“I cannot: I am tired and sick. I want some water.” He heaved a sort of
shuddering sigh, and taking me in his arms, carried me downstairs. At first I
did not know to what room he had borne me; all was cloudy to my glazed sight:
presently I felt the reviving warmth of a fire; for, summer as it was, I had
become icy cold in my chamber. He put wine to my lips; I tasted it and revived;
then I ate something he offered me, and was soon myself. I was in the
library—sitting in his chair—he was quite near. “If I could go out of life now,
without too sharp a pang, it would be well for me,” I thought; “then I should
not have to make the effort of cracking my heart-strings in rending them from
among Mr. Rochester’s. I must leave him, it appears. I do not want to leave
him—I cannot leave him.”

“How are you now, Jane?”

“Much better, sir; I shall be well soon.”

“Taste the wine again, Jane.”

I obeyed him; then he put the glass on the table, stood before me, and looked
at me attentively. Suddenly he turned away, with an inarticulate exclamation,
full of passionate emotion of some kind; he walked fast through the room and
came back; he stooped towards me as if to kiss me; but I remembered caresses
were now forbidden. I turned my face away and put his aside.

“What!—How is this?” he exclaimed hastily. “Oh, I know! you won’t kiss the
husband of Bertha Mason? You consider my arms filled and my embraces
appropriated?”

“At any rate, there is neither room nor claim for me, sir.”

“Why, Jane? I will spare you the trouble of much talking; I will answer for
you—Because I have a wife already, you would reply.—I guess rightly?”

“Yes.”

“If you think so, you must have a strange opinion of me; you must regard me as
a plotting profligate—a base and low rake who has been simulating disinterested
love in order to draw you into a snare deliberately laid, and strip you of
honour and rob you of self-respect. What do you say to that? I see you can say
nothing: in the first place, you are faint still, and have enough to do to draw
your breath; in the second place, you cannot yet accustom yourself to accuse
and revile me, and besides, the flood-gates of tears are opened, and they would
rush out if you spoke much; and you have no desire to expostulate, to upbraid,
to make a scene: you are thinking how to act—talking you consider
is of no use. I know you—I am on my guard.”
to acttalking
“Sir, I do not wish to act against you,” I said; and my unsteady voice warned
me to curtail my sentence.

“Not in your sense of the word, but in mine you are scheming to
destroy me. You have as good as said that I am a married man—as a married man
you will shun me, keep out of my way: just now you have refused to kiss me. You
intend to make yourself a complete stranger to me: to live under this roof only
as Adèle’s governess; if ever I say a friendly word to you, if ever a friendly
feeling inclines you again to me, you will say,—‘That man had nearly made me
his mistress: I must be ice and rock to him;’ and ice and rock you will
accordingly become.”
yourmine
I cleared and steadied my voice to reply: “All is changed about me, sir; I must
change too—there is no doubt of that; and to avoid fluctuations of feeling, and
continual combats with recollections and associations, there is only one
way—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 recollections of Thornfield
Hall—this accursed place—this tent of Achan—this insolent vault, offering the
ghastliness of living death to the light of the open sky—this narrow stone
hell, with its one real fiend, worse than a legion of such as we imagine. Jane,
you shall not stay here, nor will I. I was wrong ever to bring you to
Thornfield Hall, knowing as I did how it was haunted. I charged them to conceal
from you, before I ever saw you, all knowledge of the curse of the place;
merely because I feared Adèle never would have a governess to stay if she knew
with what inmate she was housed, and my plans would not permit me to remove the
maniac elsewhere—though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more
retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had
not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood,
made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Probably those damp walls would
soon have eased me of her charge: but to each villain his own vice; and mine is
not a tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate.

“Concealing the mad-woman’s neighbourhood from you, however, was something like
covering a child with a cloak and laying it down near a upas-tree: that demon’s
vicinage is poisoned, and always was. But I’ll shut up Thornfield Hall: I’ll
nail up the front door and board the lower windows: I’ll give Mrs. Poole two
hundred a year to live here with my wife, as you term that fearful hag:
Grace will do much for money, and she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby
Retreat, to bear her company and be at hand to give her aid in the paroxysms,
when my wife is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at
night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on—”
my wifemy wife
“Sir,” I interrupted him, “you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you
speak of her with hate—with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel—she cannot help
being mad.”

“Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don’t know
what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad
I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?”

“I do indeed, sir.”

“Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the
sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me
as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my
treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved,
my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat—your grasp, even in
fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did
this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would
be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in
your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could
hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return;
and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of
recognition for me.—But why do I follow that train of ideas? I was talking of
removing you from Thornfield. All, you know, is prepared for prompt departure:
to-morrow you shall go. I only ask you to endure one more night under this
roof, Jane; and then, farewell to its miseries and terrors for ever! I have a
place to repair to, which will be a secure sanctuary from hateful
reminiscences, from unwelcome intrusion—even from falsehood and slander.”

“And take Adèle with you, sir,” I interrupted; “she will be a companion 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 companion, 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 companion?”

“You spoke of a retirement, sir; and retirement and solitude are dull: too dull
for you.”

“Solitude! solitude!” he reiterated with irritation. “I see I must come to an
explanation. I don’t know what sphynx-like expression is forming in your
countenance. You are to share my solitude. Do you understand?”
You
I shook my head: it required a degree of courage, excited as he was becoming,
even to risk that mute sign of dissent. He had been walking fast about the
room, and he stopped, as if suddenly rooted to one spot. He looked at me long
and hard: I turned my eyes from him, fixed them on the fire, and tried to
assume and maintain a quiet, collected aspect.

“Now for the hitch in Jane’s character,” he said at last, speaking more calmly
than from his look I had expected him to speak. “The reel of silk has run
smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle:
here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble! By God! I
long to exert a fraction of Samson’s strength, and break the entanglement like
tow!”

He recommenced his walk, but soon again stopped, and this time just before me.

“Jane! will you hear reason?” (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear);
“because, if you won’t, I’ll try violence.” His voice was hoarse; his look that
of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond and plunge headlong
into wild license. I saw that in another moment, and with one impetus of frenzy
more, I should be able to do nothing with him. The present—the passing second
of time—was all I had in which to control and restrain him: a movement of
repulsion, flight, fear would have sealed my doom,—and his. But I was not
afraid: not in the least. I felt an inward power; a sense of influence, which
supported me. The crisis was perilous; but not without its charm: such as the
Indian, perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I took hold
of his clenched hand, loosened the contorted fingers, and said to him,
soothingly—

“Sit down; I’ll talk to you as long as you like, and hear all you have to say,
whether reasonable or unreasonable.”

He sat down: but he did not get leave to speak directly. I had been struggling
with tears for some time: I had taken great pains to repress them, because I
knew he would not like to see me weep. Now, however, I considered it well to
let them flow as freely and as long as they liked. If the flood annoyed him, so
much the better. So I gave way and cried heartily.

Soon I heard him earnestly entreating me to be composed. I said I could not
while he was in such a passion.

“But I am not angry, Jane: I only love you too well; and you had steeled your
little pale face with such a resolute, frozen look, I could not endure it.
Hush, now, and wipe your eyes.”

His softened voice announced that he was subdued; so I, in my turn, became
calm. Now he made an effort to rest his head on my shoulder, but I would not
permit it. Then he would draw me to him: no.

“Jane! Jane!” he said, in such an accent of bitter sadness it thrilled along
every nerve I had; “you don’t love me, then? It was only my station, and the
rank of my wife, that you valued? Now that you think me disqualified to become
your husband, you recoil from my touch as if I were some toad or ape.”

These words cut me: yet what could I do or I say? I ought probably to have done
or said nothing; but I was so tortured by a sense of remorse at thus hurting
his feelings, I could not control the wish to drop balm where I had wounded.

“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.”
do
“The last time, Jane! What! do you think you can live with me, and see me
daily, and yet, if you still love me, be always cold and distant?”

“No, sir; that I am certain I could not; and therefore I see there is but one
way: but you will be furious if I mention it.”

“Oh, mention it! If I storm, you have the art of weeping.”

“Mr. Rochester, I must leave you.”

“For how long, Jane? For a few minutes, while you smooth your hair—which is
somewhat dishevelled; and bathe your face—which looks feverish?”

“I must leave Adèle and Thornfield. I must part with you for my whole life: I
must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange scenes.”

“Of course: I told you you should. I pass over the madness about parting from
me. You mean you must become a part of me. As to the new existence, it is all
right: you shall yet be my wife: I am not married. You shall be Mrs.
Rochester—both virtually and nominally. I shall keep only to you so long as you
and I live. You shall go to a place I have in the south of France: a
whitewashed villa on the shores of the Mediterranean. There you shall live a
happy, and guarded, and most innocent life. Never fear that I wish to lure you
into error—to make you my mistress. Why did you shake your head? Jane, you must
be reasonable, or in truth I shall again become frantic.”

His voice and hand quivered: his large nostrils dilated; his eye blazed: still
I dared to speak.

“Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact acknowledged this morning by
yourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your mistress: to
say otherwise is sophistical—is false.”

“Jane, I am not a gentle-tempered man—you forget that: I am not long-enduring;
I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me and yourself, put your
finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and—beware!”

He bared his wrist, and offered it to me: the blood was forsaking his cheek and
lips, they were growing livid; I was distressed on all hands. To agitate him
thus deeply, by a resistance he so abhorred, was cruel: to yield was out of the
question. I did what human beings do instinctively when they are driven to
utter extremity—looked for aid to one higher than man: the words “God help me!”
burst involuntarily from my lips.

“I am a fool!” cried Mr. Rochester suddenly. “I keep telling her I am not
married, and do not explain to her why. I forget she knows nothing of the
character of that woman, or of the circumstances attending my infernal union
with her. Oh, I am certain Jane will agree with me in opinion, when she knows
all that I know! Just put your hand in mine, Janet—that I may have the evidence
of touch as well as sight, to prove you are near me—and I will in a few words
show you the real state of the case. Can you listen to me?”

“Yes, sir; for hours if you will.”

“I ask only minutes. Jane, did you ever hear or know that I was not the eldest
son of my house: that I had once a brother older than I?”

“I remember Mrs. Fairfax told me so once.”

“And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious, grasping man?”

“I have understood something to that effect.”

“Well, Jane, being so, it was his resolution to keep the property together; he
could not bear the idea of dividing his estate and leaving me a fair portion:
all, he resolved, should go to my brother, Rowland. Yet as little could he
endure that a son of his should be a poor man. I must be provided for by a
wealthy marriage. He sought me a partner betimes. Mr. Mason, a West India
planter and merchant, was his old acquaintance. He was certain his possessions
were real and vast: he made inquiries. Mr. Mason, he found, had a son and
daughter; and he learned from him that he could and would give the latter a
fortune of thirty thousand pounds: that sufficed. When I left college, I was
sent out to Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me. My father said
nothing about her money; but he told me Miss Mason was the boast of Spanish
Town for her beauty: and this was no lie. I found her a fine woman, in the
style of Blanche Ingram: tall, dark, and majestic. Her family wished to secure
me because I was of a good race; and so did she. They showed her to me in
parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom saw her alone, and had very little
private conversation with her. She flattered me, and lavishly displayed for my
pleasure her charms and accomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to
admire her and envy me. I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and
being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her. There is no
folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the
rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission. Her
relatives encouraged me; competitors piqued me; she allured me: a marriage was
achieved almost before I knew where I was. Oh, I have no respect for myself
when I think of that act!—an agony of inward contempt masters me. I never
loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her. I was not sure of the
existence of one virtue in her nature: I had marked neither modesty, nor
benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement in her mind or manners—and, I married
her:—gross, grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was! With less sin I might
have—But let me remember to whom I am speaking.

“My bride’s mother I had never seen: I understood she was dead. The honeymoon
over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and shut up in a lunatic asylum.
There was a younger brother, too—a complete dumb idiot. The elder one, whom you
have seen (and whom I cannot hate, whilst I abhor all his kindred, because he
has some grains of affection in his feeble mind, shown in the continued
interest he takes in his wretched sister, and also in a dog-like attachment he
once bore me), will probably be in the same state one day. My father and my
brother Rowland knew all this; but they thought only of the thirty thousand
pounds, and joined in the plot against me.

“These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery of concealment, I
should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife, even when I found her
nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind
common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher,
expanded to anything larger—when I found that I could not pass a single
evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort; that kindly
conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I
started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite,
perverse and imbecile—when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or
settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her
violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory,
exacting orders—even then I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I
curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in secret;
I repressed the deep antipathy I felt.

“Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details: some strong words shall
express what I have to say. I lived with that woman upstairs four years, and
before that time she had tried me indeed: her character ripened and developed
with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so
strong, only cruelty could check them, and I would not use cruelty. What a
pigmy intellect she had, and what giant propensities! How fearful were the
curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an
infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which
must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste.

“My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four years my
father died too. I was rich enough now—yet poor to hideous indigence: a nature
the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was associated with mine, and
called by the law and by society a part of me. And I could not rid myself of it
by any legal proceedings: for the doctors now discovered that my wife
was mad—her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity. Jane, you
don’t like my narrative; you look almost sick—shall I defer the rest to another
day?”
my wife
“No, sir, finish it now; I pity you—I do earnestly pity you.”

“Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which
one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that
is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybrid,
egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those
who have endured them. But that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling
of which your whole face is full at this moment—with which your eyes are now
almost overflowing—with which your heart is heaving—with which your hand is
trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love: its
anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion. I accept it, Jane; let
the daughter have free advent—my arms wait to receive her.”

“Now, sir, proceed; what did you do when you found she was mad?”

“Jane, I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self-respect was all
that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes of the world, I was
doubtless covered with grimy dishonour; but I resolved to be clean in my own
sight—and to the last I repudiated the contamination of her crimes, and
wrenched myself from connection with her mental defects. Still, society
associated my name and person with hers; I yet saw her and heard her daily:
something of her breath (faugh!) mixed with the air I breathed; and besides, I
remembered I had once been her husband—that recollection was then, and is now,
inexpressibly odious to me; moreover, I knew that while she lived I could never
be the husband of another and better wife; and, though five years my senior
(her family and her father had lied to me even in the particular of her age),
she was likely to live as long as I, being as robust in frame as she was infirm
in mind. Thus, at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless.

“One night I had been awakened by her yells—(since the medical men had
pronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up)—it was a fiery West
Indian night; one of the description that frequently precede the hurricanes of
those climates. Being unable to sleep in bed, I got up and opened the window.
The air was like sulphur-steams—I could find no refreshment anywhere.
Mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room; the sea, which I
could hear from thence, rumbled dull like an earthquake—black clouds were
casting up over it; the moon was setting in the waves, broad and red, like a
hot cannon-ball—she threw her last bloody glance over a world quivering with
the ferment of tempest. I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and
scene, and my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out;
wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with
such language!—no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she:
though two rooms off, I heard every word—the thin partitions of the West India
house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish cries.

“‘This life,’ said I at last, ‘is hell: this is the air—those are the sounds of
the bottomless pit! I have a right to deliver myself from it if I can. The
sufferings of this mortal state will leave me with the heavy flesh that now
cumbers my soul. Of the fanatic’s burning eternity I have no fear: there is not
a future state worse than this present one—let me break away, and go home to
God!’

“I said this whilst I knelt down at and unlocked a trunk which contained a
brace of loaded pistols: I meant to shoot myself. I only entertained the
intention for a moment; for, not being insane, the crisis of exquisite and
unalloyed despair, which had originated the wish and design of
self-destruction, was past in a second.

“A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through the open
casement: the storm broke, streamed, thundered, blazed, and the air grew pure.
I then framed and fixed a resolution. While I walked under the dripping
orange-trees of my wet garden, and amongst its drenched pomegranates and
pine-apples, and while the refulgent dawn of the tropics kindled round me—I
reasoned thus, Jane—and now listen; for it was true Wisdom that consoled me in
that hour, and showed me the right path to follow.

“The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed leaves, and
the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty; my heart, dried up and
scorched for a long time, swelled to the tone, and filled with living blood—my
being longed for renewal—my soul thirsted for a pure draught. I saw hope
revive—and felt regeneration possible. From a flowery arch at the bottom of my
garden I gazed over the sea—bluer than the sky: the old world was beyond; clear
prospects opened thus:—

“‘Go,’ said Hope, ‘and live again in Europe: there it is not known what a
sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you. You may take
the maniac with you to England; confine her with due attendance and precautions
at Thornfield: then travel yourself to what clime you will, and form what new
tie you like. That woman, who has so abused your long-suffering, so sullied
your name, so outraged your honour, so blighted your youth, is not your wife,
nor are you her husband. See that she is cared for as her condition demands,
and you have done all that God and humanity require of you. Let her identity,
her connection with yourself, be buried in oblivion: you are bound to impart
them to no living being. Place her in safety and comfort: shelter her
degradation with secrecy, and leave her.’

“I acted precisely on this suggestion. My father and brother had not made my
marriage known to their acquaintance; because, in the very first letter I wrote
to apprise them of the union—having already begun to experience extreme disgust
of its consequences, and, from the family character and constitution, seeing a
hideous future opening to me—I added an urgent charge to keep it secret: and
very soon the infamous conduct of the wife my father had selected for me was
such as to make him blush to own her as his daughter-in-law. Far from desiring
to publish the connection, he became as anxious to conceal it as myself.

“To England, then, I conveyed her; a fearful voyage I had with such a monster
in the vessel. Glad was I when I at last got her to Thornfield, and saw her
safely lodged in that third-storey room, of whose secret inner cabinet she has
now for ten years made a wild beast’s den—a goblin’s cell. I had some trouble
in finding an attendant for her, as it was necessary to select one on whose
fidelity dependence could be placed; for her ravings would inevitably betray my
secret: besides, she had lucid intervals of days—sometimes weeks—which she
filled up with abuse of me. At last I hired Grace Poole from the Grimbsy
Retreat. She and the surgeon, Carter (who dressed Mason’s wounds that night he
was stabbed and worried), are the only two I have ever admitted to my
confidence. Mrs. Fairfax may indeed have suspected something, but she could
have gained no precise knowledge as to facts. Grace has, on the whole, proved a
good keeper; though, owing partly to a fault of her own, of which it appears
nothing can cure her, and which is incident to her harassing profession, her
vigilance has been more than once lulled and baffled. The lunatic is both
cunning and malignant; she has never failed to take advantage of her guardian’s
temporary lapses; once to secrete the knife with which she stabbed her brother,
and twice to possess herself of the key of her cell, and issue therefrom in the
night-time. On the first of these occasions, she perpetrated the attempt to
burn me in my bed; on the second, she paid that ghastly visit to you. I thank
Providence, who watched over you, that she then spent her fury on your wedding
apparel, which perhaps brought back vague reminiscences of her own bridal days:
but on what might have happened, I cannot endure to reflect. When I think of
the thing which flew at my throat this morning, hanging its black and scarlet
visage over the nest of my dove, my blood curdles—”

“And what, sir,” I asked, while he paused, “did you do when you had settled her
here? Where did you go?”

“What did I do, Jane? I transformed myself into a will-o’-the-wisp. Where did I
go? I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the March-spirit. I sought the
Continent, and went devious through all its lands. My fixed desire was to seek
and find a good and intelligent woman, whom I could love: a contrast to the
fury I left at Thornfield—”

“But you could not marry, sir.”

“I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought. It was not my
original intention to deceive, as I have deceived you. I meant to tell my tale
plainly, and make my proposals openly: and it appeared to me so absolutely
rational that I should be considered free to love and be loved, I never doubted
some woman might be found willing and able to understand my case and accept me,
in spite of the curse with which I was burdened.”

“Well, sir?”

“When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You open your eyes
like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless movement, as if
answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you, and you wanted to read the
tablet of one’s heart. But before I go on, tell me what you mean by your ‘Well,
sir?’ It is a small phrase very frequent with you; and which many a time has
drawn me on and on through interminable talk: I don’t very well know why.”

“I mean,—What next? How did you proceed? What came of such an event?”

“Precisely! and what do you wish to know now?”

“Whether you found any one you liked: whether you asked her to marry you; and
what she said.”

“I can tell you whether I found any one I liked, and whether I asked her to
marry me: but what she said is yet to be recorded in the book of Fate. For ten
long years I roved about, living first in one capital, then another: sometimes
in St. Petersburg; oftener in Paris; occasionally in Rome, Naples, and
Florence. Provided with plenty of money and the passport of an old name, I
could choose my own society: no circles were closed against me. I sought my
ideal of a woman amongst English ladies, French countesses, Italian signoras,
and German gräfinnen. I could not find her. Sometimes, for a fleeting
moment, I thought I caught a glance, heard a tone, beheld a form, which
announced the realisation of my dream: but I was presently undeceived. You are
not to suppose that I desired perfection, either of mind or person. I longed
only for what suited me—for the antipodes of the Creole: and I longed vainly.
Amongst them all I found not one whom, had I been ever so free, I—warned as I
was of the risks, the horrors, the loathings of incongruous unions—would have
asked to marry me. Disappointment made me reckless. I tried dissipation—never
debauchery: that I hated, and hate. That was my Indian Messalina’s attribute:
rooted disgust at it and her restrained me much, even in pleasure. Any
enjoyment that bordered on riot seemed to approach me to her and her vices, and
I eschewed it.

“Yet I could not live alone; so I tried the companionship of mistresses. The
first I chose was Céline Varens—another of those steps which make a man spurn
himself when he recalls them. You already know what she was, and how my liaison
with her terminated. She had two successors: an Italian, Giacinta, and a
German, Clara; both considered singularly handsome. What was their beauty to me
in a few weeks? Giacinta was unprincipled and violent: I tired of her in three
months. Clara was honest and quiet; but heavy, mindless, and unimpressible: not
one whit to my taste. I was glad to give her a sufficient sum to set her up in
a good line of business, and so get decently rid of her. But, Jane, I see by
your face you are not forming a very favourable opinion of me just now. You
think me an unfeeling, loose-principled rake: don’t you?”

“I don’t like you so well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir. Did it not
seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way, first with one mistress and
then another? You talk of it as a mere matter of course.”

“It was with me; and I did not like it. It was a grovelling fashion of
existence: I should never like to return to it. Hiring a mistress is the next
worse thing to buying a slave: both are often by nature, and always by
position, inferior: and to live familiarly with inferiors is degrading. I now
hate the recollection of the time I passed with Céline, Giacinta, and Clara.”

I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain inference,
that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching that had ever been
instilled into me, as—under any pretext—with any justification—through any
temptation—to become the successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard
me with the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory. I did
not give utterance to this conviction: it was enough to feel it. I impressed it
on my heart, that it might remain there to serve me as aid in the time of
trial.

“Now, Jane, why don’t you say ‘Well, sir?’ I have not done. You are looking
grave. You disapprove of me still, I see. But let me come to the point. Last
January, rid of all mistresses—in a harsh, bitter frame of mind, the result of
a useless, roving, lonely life—corroded with disappointment, sourly disposed
against all men, and especially against all womankind (for I began to
regard the notion of an intellectual, faithful, loving woman as a mere dream),
recalled by business, I came back to England.
woman
“On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall. Abhorred
spot! I expected no peace—no pleasure there. On a stile in Hay Lane I saw a
quiet little figure sitting by itself. I passed it as negligently as I did the
pollard willow opposite to it: I had no presentiment of what it would be to me;
no inward warning that the arbitress of my life—my genius for good or
evil—waited there in humble guise. I did not know it, even when, on the
occasion of Mesrour’s accident, it came up and gravely offered me help.
Childish and slender creature! It seemed as if a linnet had hopped to my foot
and proposed to bear me on its tiny wing. I was surly; but the thing would not
go: it stood by me with strange perseverance, and looked and spoke with a sort
of authority. I must be aided, and by that hand: and aided I was.

“When once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new—a fresh sap and
sense—stole into my frame. It was well I had learnt that this elf must return
to me—that it belonged to my house down below—or I could not have felt it pass
away from under my hand, and seen it vanish behind the dim hedge, without
singular regret. I heard you come home that night, Jane, though probably you
were not aware that I thought of you or watched for you. The next day I
observed you—myself unseen—for half-an-hour, while you played with 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 once into deep
reverie: you betook yourself slowly to pace the gallery. Now and then, in
passing a casement, you glanced out at the thick-falling snow; you listened to
the sobbing wind, and again you paced gently on and dreamed. I think those day
visions were not dark: there was a pleasurable illumination in your eye
occasionally, a soft excitement in your aspect, which told of no bitter,
bilious, hypochondriac brooding: your look revealed rather the sweet musings of
youth when its spirit follows on willing wings the flight of Hope up and on to
an ideal heaven. The voice of Mrs. Fairfax, speaking to a servant in the hall,
wakened you: and how curiously you smiled to and at yourself, Janet! There was
much sense in your smile: it was very shrewd, and seemed to make light of your
own abstraction. It seemed to say—‘My fine visions are all very well, but I
must not forget they are absolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green
flowery Eden in my brain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a
rough tract to travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter.’ You
ran downstairs and demanded of Mrs. Fairfax some occupation: the weekly house
accounts to make up, or something of that sort, I think it was. I was vexed
with you for getting out of my sight.

“Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you to my presence. An
unusual—to me—a perfectly new character I suspected was yours: I desired to
search it deeper and know it better. You entered the room with a look and air
at once shy and independent: you were quaintly dressed—much as you are now. I
made you talk: ere long I found you full of strange contrasts. Your garb and
manner were restricted by rule; your air was often diffident, and altogether
that of one refined by nature, but absolutely unused to society, and a good
deal afraid of making herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or
blunder; yet when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing eye to
your interlocutor’s face: there was penetration and power in each glance you
gave; when plied by close questions, you found ready and round answers. Very
soon you seemed to get used to me: I believe you felt the existence of sympathy
between you and your grim and cross master, Jane; for it was astonishing to see
how quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquillised your manner: snarl as I
would, you showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure at my
moroseness; you watched me, and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet
sagacious grace I cannot describe. I was at once content and stimulated with
what I saw: I liked what I had seen, and wished to see more. Yet, for a long
time, I treated you distantly, and sought your company rarely. I was an
intellectual epicure, and wished to prolong the gratification of making this
novel and piquant acquaintance: besides, I was for a while troubled with a
haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade—the
sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not then know that it was no
transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an
indestructible gem. Moreover, I wished to see whether you would seek me if I
shunned you—but you did not; you kept in the schoolroom as still as your own
desk and easel; if by chance I met you, you passed me as soon, and with as
little token of recognition, as was consistent with respect. Your habitual
expression in those days, Jane, was a thoughtful look; not despondent, for you
were not sickly; but not buoyant, for you had little hope, and no actual
pleasure. I wondered what you thought of me, or if you ever thought of me, and
resolved to find this out.

“I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in your glance, and
genial in your manner, when you conversed: I saw you had a social heart; it was
the silent schoolroom—it was the tedium of your life—that made you mournful. I
permitted myself the delight of being kind to you; kindness stirred emotion
soon: your face became soft in expression, your tones gentle; I liked my name
pronounced by your lips in a grateful happy accent. I used to enjoy a chance
meeting with you, Jane, at this time: there was a curious hesitation in your
manner: you glanced at me with a slight trouble—a hovering doubt: you did not
know what my caprice might be—whether I was going to play the master and be
stern, or the friend and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often to
simulate the first whim; and, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such
bloom and light and bliss rose to your young, wistful features, I had much ado
often to avoid straining you then and there to my heart.”

“Don’t talk any more of those days, sir,” I interrupted, furtively dashing away
some tears from my eyes; his language was torture to me; for I knew what I must
do—and do soon—and all these reminiscences, and these revelations of his
feelings only made my work more difficult.

“No, Jane,” he returned: “what necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when
the Present is so much surer—the Future so much brighter?”

I shuddered to hear the infatuated assertion.

“You see now how the case stands—do you not?” he continued. “After a youth and
manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have
for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you. You are
my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong
attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is
conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of
life, wraps my existence about you, and, kindling in pure, powerful flame,
fuses you and me in one.
you
“It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry you. To tell me
that I had already a wife is empty mockery: you know now that I had but a
hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I feared a
stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early instilled prejudice:
I wanted to have you safe before hazarding confidences. This was cowardly: I
should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do
now—opened to you plainly my life of agony—described to you my hunger and
thirst after a higher and worthier existence—shown to you, not my
resolution (that word is weak), but my resistless bent to love
faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well loved in return. Then I
should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity and to give me yours.
Jane—give it me now.”
resolutionbent
A pause.

“Why are you silent, Jane?”

I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible
moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning! Not a human being that ever lived
could wish to be loved better than I was loved; and him who thus loved me I
absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce love and idol. One drear word
comprised my intolerable duty—“Depart!”

“Jane, you understand what I want of you? Just this promise—‘I will be yours,
Mr. Rochester.’”

“Mr. Rochester, I will not be yours.”
not
Another long silence.

“Jane!” recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down with grief, and
turned me stone-cold with ominous terror—for this still voice was the pant of a
lion rising—“Jane, do you mean to go one way in the world, and to let me go
another?”

“I do.”

“Jane” (bending towards and embracing me), “do you mean it now?”

“I do.”

“And now?” softly kissing my forehead and cheek.

“I do,” extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely.

“Oh, Jane, this is bitter! This—this is wicked. It would not be wicked to love
me.”

“It would to obey you.”

A wild look raised his brows—crossed his features: he rose; but he forebore
yet. I laid my hand on the back of a chair for support: I shook, I feared—but I
resolved.

“One instant, Jane. Give one glance to my horrible life when you are gone. All
happiness will be torn away with you. What then is left? For a wife I have but
the maniac upstairs: as well might you refer me to some corpse in yonder
churchyard. What shall I do, Jane? Where turn for a companion and for some
hope?”

“Do as I do: trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet again
there.”

“Then you will not yield?”

“No.”

“Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed?” His voice rose.

“I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil.”

“Then you snatch love and innocence from me? You fling me back on lust for a
passion—vice for an occupation?”

“Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for
myself. We were born to strive and endure—you as well as I: do so. You will
forget me before I forget you.”

“You make me a liar by such language: you sully my honour. I declared I could
not change: you tell me to my face I shall change soon. And what a distortion
in your judgment, what a perversity in your ideas, is proved by your conduct!
Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere
human law, no man being injured by the breach? for you have neither relatives
nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me?”

This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors
against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as
loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. “Oh, comply!” it said. “Think of
his misery; think of his danger—look at his state when left alone; remember his
headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair—soothe him;
save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world
cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?”
you
Still indomitable was the reply—“I care for myself. The more solitary,
the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.
I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the
principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and
principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such
moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour;
stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I
might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always
believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite
insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can
count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I
have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.”
I
I did. Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so. His fury was
wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a moment, whatever followed; he
crossed the floor and seized my arm and grasped my waist. He seemed to devour
me with his flaming glance: physically, I felt, at the moment, powerless as
stubble exposed to the draught and glow of a furnace: mentally, I still
possessed my soul, and with it the certainty of ultimate safety. The soul,
fortunately, has an interpreter—often an unconscious, but still a truthful
interpreter—in the eye. My eye rose to his; and while I looked in his fierce
face I gave an involuntary sigh; his gripe was painful, and my over-taxed
strength almost exhausted.

“Never,” said he, as he ground his teeth, “never was anything at once so frail
and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!” (And he shook me with
the force of his hold.) “I could bend her with my finger and thumb: and what
good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye:
consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with
more than courage—with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot
get at it—the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight
prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the
house; but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself
possessor of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit—with will and
energy, and virtue and purity—that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of
yourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you
would: seized against your will, you will elude the grasp like an essence—you
will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh! come, Jane, come!”

As he said this, he released me from his clutch, and only looked at me. The
look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain: only an idiot, however,
would have succumbed now. I had dared and baffled his fury; I must elude his
sorrow: I retired to the door.

“You are going, Jane?”

“I am going, sir.”

“You are leaving me?”

“Yes.”

“You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My deep love, my
wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?”

What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard it was to reiterate firmly,
“I am going.”

“Jane!”

“Mr. Rochester!”

“Withdraw, then,—I consent; but remember, you leave me here in anguish. Go up
to your own room; think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a glance on my
sufferings—think of me.”

He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. “Oh, Jane! my hope—my
love—my life!” broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a deep, strong sob.

I had already gained the door; but, reader, I walked back—walked back as
determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him; I turned his face from
the cushion to me; I kissed his cheek; I smoothed his hair with my hand.

“God bless you, my dear master!” I said. “God keep you from harm and
wrong—direct you, solace you—reward you well for your past kindness to me.”

“Little Jane’s love would have been my best reward,” he answered; “without it,
my heart is broken. But Jane will give me her love: yes—nobly, generously.”

Up the blood rushed to his face; forth flashed the fire from his eyes; erect he
sprang; he held his arms out; but I evaded the embrace, and at once quitted the
room.

“Farewell!” was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added, “Farewell for
ever!”

That night I never thought to sleep; but a slumber fell on me as soon as I lay
down in bed. I was transported in thought to the scenes of childhood: I dreamt
I lay in the red-room at Gateshead; that the night was dark, and my mind
impressed with strange fears. The light that long ago had struck me into
syncope, recalled in this vision, seemed glidingly to mount the wall, and
tremblingly to pause in the centre of the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head
to look: the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim; the gleam was such as the
moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I watched her come—watched with
the strangest anticipation; as though some word of doom were to be written on
her disk. She broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first
penetrated the sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon, but a white
human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed
and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet
so near, it whispered in my heart—

“My daughter, flee temptation.”

“Mother, I will.”

So I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream. It was yet night,
but July nights are short: soon after midnight, dawn comes. “It cannot be too
early to commence the task I have to fulfil,” thought I. I rose: I was dressed;
for I had taken off nothing but my shoes. I knew where to find in my drawers
some linen, a locket, a ring. In seeking these articles, I encountered the
beads of a pearl necklace Mr. Rochester had forced me to accept a few days ago.
I left that; it was not mine: it was the visionary bride’s who had melted in
air. The other articles I made up in a parcel; my purse, containing twenty
shillings (it was all I had), I put in my pocket: I tied on my straw bonnet,
pinned my shawl, took the parcel and my slippers, which I would not put on yet,
and stole from my room.

“Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax!” I whispered, as I glided past her door.
“Farewell, my darling Adèle!” I said, as I glanced towards the nursery. No
thought could be admitted of entering to embrace her. I had to deceive a fine
ear: for aught I knew it might now be listening.

I would have got past Mr. Rochester’s chamber without a pause; but my heart
momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced to stop
also. No sleep was there: the inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall;
and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was a heaven—a temporary
heaven—in this room for me, if I chose: I had but to go in and to say—

“Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till death,” and
a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought of this.

That kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with impatience for day.
He would send for me in the morning; I should be gone. He would have me sought
for: vainly. He would feel himself forsaken; his love rejected: he would
suffer; perhaps grow desperate. I thought of this too. My hand moved towards
the lock: I caught it back, and glided on.

Drearily I wound my way downstairs: I knew what I had to do, and I did it
mechanically. I sought the key of the side-door in the kitchen; I sought, too,
a phial of oil and a feather; I oiled the key and the lock. I got some water, I
got some bread: for perhaps I should have to walk far; and my strength, sorely
shaken of late, must not break down. All this I did without one sound. I opened
the door, passed out, shut it softly. Dim dawn glimmered in the yard. The great
gates were closed and locked; but a wicket in one of them was only latched.
Through that I departed: it, too, I shut; and now I was out of Thornfield.

A mile off, beyond the fields, lay a road which stretched in the contrary
direction to Millcote; a road I had never travelled, but often noticed, and
wondered where it led: thither I bent my steps. No reflection was to be allowed
now: not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. Not one thought
was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so
heavenly sweet—so deadly sad—that to read one line of it would dissolve my
courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank: something like
the world when the deluge was gone by.

I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise. I believe it was a
lovely summer morning: I know my shoes, which I had put on when I left the
house, were soon wet with dew. But I looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling
sky, nor wakening nature. He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to
the scaffold, thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the
block and axe-edge; of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave gaping
at the end: and I thought of drear flight and homeless wandering—and oh! with
agony I thought of what I left. I could not help it. I thought of him now—in
his room—watching the sunrise; hoping I should soon come to say I would stay
with him and be his. I longed to be his; I panted to return: it was not too
late; I could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement. As yet my flight, I
was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and be his comforter—his pride; his
redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin. Oh, that fear of his
self-abandonment—far worse than my abandonment—how it goaded me! It was a
barbed arrow-head in my breast; it tore me when I tried to extract it; it
sickened me when remembrance thrust it farther in. Birds began singing in brake
and copse: birds were faithful to their mates; birds were emblems of love. What
was I? In the midst of my pain of heart and frantic effort of principle, I
abhorred myself. I had no solace from self-approbation: none even from
self-respect. I had injured—wounded—left my master. I was hateful in my own
eyes. Still I could not turn, nor retrace one step. God must have led me on. As
to my own will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled
the other. I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way: fast, fast I
went like one delirious. A weakness, beginning inwardly, extending to the
limbs, seized me, and I fell: I lay on the ground some minutes, pressing my
face to the wet turf. I had some fear—or hope—that here I should die: but I was
soon up; crawling forwards on my hands and knees, and then again raised to my
feet—as eager and as determined as ever to reach the road.

When I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge; and while I
sat, I heard wheels, and saw a coach come on. I stood up and lifted my hand; it
stopped. I asked where it was going: the driver named a place a long way off,
and where I was sure Mr. Rochester had no connections. I asked for what sum he
would take me there; he said thirty shillings; I answered I had but twenty;
well, he would try to make it do. He further gave me leave to get into the
inside, as the vehicle was empty: I entered, was shut in, and it rolled on its
way.

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed
such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never
appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in that hour left my
lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what
you wholly love.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Two days are passed. It is a summer evening; the coachman has set me down at a
place called Whitcross; he could take me no farther for the sum I had given,
and I was not possessed of another shilling in the world. The coach is a mile
off by this time; I am alone. At this moment I discover that I forgot to take
my parcel out of the pocket of the coach, where I had placed it for safety;
there it remains, there it must remain; and now, I am absolutely destitute.

Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet; it is but a stone pillar set up where
four roads meet: whitewashed, I suppose, to be more obvious at a distance and
in darkness. Four arms spring from its summit: the nearest town to which these
point is, according to the inscription, distant ten miles; the farthest, above
twenty. From the well-known names of these towns I learn in what county I have
lighted; a north-midland shire, dusk with moorland, ridged with mountain: this
I see. There are great moors behind and on each hand of me; there are waves of
mountains far beyond that deep valley at my feet. The population here must be
thin, and I see no passengers on these roads: they stretch out east, west,
north, and south—white, broad, lonely; they are all cut in the moor, and the
heather grows deep and wild to their very verge. Yet a chance traveller might
pass by; and I wish no eye to see me now: strangers would wonder what I am
doing, lingering here at the sign-post, evidently objectless and lost. I might
be questioned: I could give no answer but what would sound incredible and
excite suspicion. Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment—not a
charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are—none that saw me would
have a kind thought or a good wish for me. I have no relative but the universal
mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and ask repose.

I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing
the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I turned with its
turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat
down under it. High banks of moor were about me; the crag protected my head:
the sky was over that.

Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here: I had a vague dread that
wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or poacher might discover me.
If a gust of wind swept the waste, I looked up, fearing it was the rush of a
bull; if a plover whistled, I imagined it a man. Finding my apprehensions
unfounded, however, and calmed by the deep silence that reigned as evening
declined at nightfall, I took confidence. As yet I had not thought; I had only
listened, watched, dreaded; now I regained the faculty of reflection.

What was I to do? Where to go? Oh, intolerable questions, when I could do
nothing and go nowhere!—when a long way must yet be measured by my weary,
trembling limbs before I could reach human habitation—when cold charity must be
entreated before I could get a lodging: reluctant sympathy importuned, almost
certain repulse incurred, before my tale could be listened to, or one of my
wants relieved!

I touched the heath: it was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the summer day.
I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm
ridge. The dew fell, but with propitious softness; no breeze whispered. Nature
seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I,
who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her
with filial fondness. To-night, at least, I would be her guest, as I was her
child: my mother would lodge me without money and without price. I had one
morsel of bread yet: the remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed
through at noon with a stray penny—my last coin. I saw ripe bilberries gleaming
here and there, like jet beads in the heath: I gathered a handful and ate them
with the bread. My hunger, sharp before, was, if not satisfied, appeased by
this hermit’s meal. I said my evening prayers at its conclusion, and then chose
my couch.

Beside the crag the heath was very deep: when I lay down my feet were buried in
it; rising high on each side, it left only a narrow space for the night-air to
invade. I folded my shawl double, and spread it over me for a coverlet; a low,
mossy swell was my pillow. Thus lodged, I was not, at least at the commencement
of the night, cold.

My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. It plained
of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven chords. It trembled for
Mr. Rochester and his doom; it bemoaned him with bitter pity; it demanded him
with ceaseless longing; and, impotent as a bird with both wings broken, it
still quivered its shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him.

Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was come, and
her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship
of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence
most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in
the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we
read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to
my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw
the mighty Milky-way. Remembering what it was—what countless systems there
swept space like a soft trace of light—I felt the might and strength of God.
Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that
neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my
prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr.
Rochester was safe: he was God’s, and by God would he be guarded. I again
nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long in sleep forgot sorrow.

But next day, Want came to me pale and bare. Long after the little birds had
left their nests; long after bees had come in the sweet prime of day to gather
the heath honey before the dew was dried—when the long morning shadows were
curtailed, and the sun filled earth and sky—I got up, and I looked round me.

What a still, hot, perfect day! What a golden desert this spreading moor!
Everywhere sunshine. I wished I could live in it and on it. I saw a lizard run
over the crag; I saw a bee busy among the sweet bilberries. I would fain at the
moment have become bee or lizard, that I might have found fitting nutriment,
permanent shelter here. But I was a human being, and had a human being’s wants:
I must not linger where there was nothing to supply them. I rose; I looked back
at the bed I had left. Hopeless of the future, I wished but this—that my Maker
had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that
this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now
but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness.
Life, however, was yet in my possession, with all its requirements, and pains,
and responsibilities. The burden must be carried; the want provided for; the
suffering endured; the responsibility fulfilled. I set out.

Whitcross regained, I followed a road which led from the sun, now fervent and
high. By no other circumstance had I will to decide my choice. I walked a long
time, and when I thought I had nearly done enough, and might conscientiously
yield to the fatigue that almost overpowered me—might relax this forced action,
and, sitting down on a stone I saw near, submit resistlessly to the apathy that
clogged heart and limb—I heard a bell chime—a church bell.

I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the romantic hills,
whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a
spire. All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture-fields, and
cornfields, and wood; and a glittering stream ran zig-zag through the varied
shades of green, the mellowing grain, the sombre woodland, the clear and sunny
lea. Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to the road before me, I saw a
heavily-laden waggon labouring up the hill, and not far beyond were two cows
and their drover. Human life and human labour were near. I must struggle on:
strive to live and bend to toil like the rest.

About two o’clock P.M. I entered the village. At the bottom of
its one street there was a little shop with some cakes of bread in the window.
I coveted a cake of bread. With that refreshment I could perhaps regain a
degree of energy: without it, it would be difficult to proceed. The wish to
have some strength and some vigour returned to me as soon as I was amongst my
fellow-beings. I felt it would be degrading to faint with hunger on the
causeway of a hamlet. Had I nothing about me I could offer in exchange for one
of these rolls? I considered. I had a small silk handkerchief tied round my
throat; I had my gloves. I could hardly tell how men and women in extremities
of destitution proceeded. I did not know whether either of these articles would
be accepted: probably they would not; but I must try.

I entered the shop: a woman was there. Seeing a respectably-dressed person, a
lady as she supposed, she came forward with civility. How could she serve me? I
was seized with shame: my tongue would not utter the request I had prepared. I
dared not offer her the half-worn gloves, the creased handkerchief: besides, I
felt it would be absurd. I only begged permission to sit down a moment, as I
was tired. Disappointed in the expectation of a customer, she coolly acceded to
my request. She pointed to a seat; I sank into it. I felt sorely urged to weep;
but conscious how unseasonable such a manifestation would be, I restrained it.
Soon I asked her “if there were any dressmaker or plain-workwoman in the
village?”

“Yes; two or three. Quite as many as there was employment for.”

I reflected. I was driven to the point now. I was brought face to face with
Necessity. I stood in the position of one without a resource, without a friend,
without a coin. I must do something. What? I must apply somewhere. Where?

“Did she know of any place in the neighbourhood where a servant was wanted?”

“Nay; she couldn’t say.”

“What was the chief trade in this place? What did most of the people do?”

“Some were farm labourers; a good deal worked at Mr. Oliver’s needle-factory,
and at the foundry.”

“Did Mr. Oliver employ women?”

“Nay; it was men’s work.”

“And what do the women do?”

“I knawn’t,” was the answer. “Some does one thing, and some another. Poor folk
mun get on as they can.”

She seemed to be tired of my questions: and, indeed, what claim had I to
importune her? A neighbour or two came in; my chair was evidently wanted. I
took leave.

I passed up the street, looking as I went at all the houses to the right hand
and to the left; but I could discover no pretext, nor see an inducement to
enter any. I rambled round the hamlet, going sometimes to a little distance and
returning again, for an hour or more. Much exhausted, and suffering greatly now
for want of food, I turned aside into a lane and sat down under the hedge. Ere
many minutes had elapsed, I was again on my feet, however, and again searching
something—a resource, or at least an informant. A pretty little house stood at
the top of the lane, with a garden before it, exquisitely neat and brilliantly
blooming. I stopped at it. What business had I to approach the white door or
touch the glittering knocker? In what way could it possibly be the interest of
the inhabitants of that dwelling to serve me? Yet I drew near and knocked. A
mild-looking, cleanly-attired young woman opened the door. In such a voice as
might be expected from a hopeless heart and fainting frame—a voice wretchedly
low and faltering—I asked if a servant was wanted here?

“No,” said she; “we do not keep a servant.”

“Can you tell me where I could get employment of any kind?” I continued. “I am
a stranger, without acquaintance in this place. I want some work: no matter
what.”

But it was not her business to think for me, or to seek a place for me:
besides, in her eyes, how doubtful must have appeared my character, position,
tale. She shook her head, she “was sorry she could give me no information,” and
the white door closed, quite gently and civilly: but it shut me out. If she had
held it open a little longer, I believe I should have begged a piece of bread;
for I was now brought low.

I could not bear to return to the sordid village, where, besides, no prospect
of aid was visible. I should have longed rather to deviate to a wood I saw not
far off, which appeared in its thick shade to offer inviting shelter; but I was
so sick, so weak, so gnawed with nature’s cravings, instinct kept me roaming
round abodes where there was a chance of food. Solitude would be no
solitude—rest no rest—while the vulture, hunger, thus sank beak and talons in
my side.

I drew near houses; I left them, and came back again, and again I wandered
away: always repelled by the consciousness of having no claim to ask—no right
to expect interest in my isolated lot. Meantime, the afternoon advanced, while
I thus wandered about like a lost and starving dog. In crossing a field, I saw
the church spire before me: I hastened towards it. Near the churchyard, and in
the middle of a garden, stood a well-built though small house, which I had no
doubt was the parsonage. I remembered that strangers who arrive at a place
where they have no friends, and who want employment, sometimes apply to the
clergyman for introduction and aid. It is the clergyman’s function to help—at
least with advice—those who wished to help themselves. I seemed to have
something like a right to seek counsel here. Renewing then my courage, and
gathering my feeble remains of strength, I pushed on. I reached the house, and
knocked at the kitchen-door. An old woman opened: I asked was this the
parsonage?

“Yes.”

“Was the clergyman in?”

“No.”

“Would he be in soon?”

“No, he was gone from home.”

“To a distance?”

“Not so far—happen three mile. He had been called away by the sudden death of
his father: he was at Marsh End now, and would very likely stay there a
fortnight longer.”

“Was there any lady of the house?”

“Nay, there was naught but her, and she was housekeeper;” and of her, reader, I
could not bear to ask the relief for want of which I was sinking; I could not
yet beg; and again I crawled away.

Once more I took off my handkerchief—once more I thought of the cakes of bread
in the little shop. Oh, for but a crust! for but one mouthful to allay the pang
of famine! Instinctively I turned my face again to the village; I found the
shop again, and I went in; and though others were there besides the woman I
ventured the request—“Would she give me a roll for this handkerchief?”

She looked at me with evident suspicion: “Nay, she never sold stuff i’ that
way.”

Almost desperate, I asked for half a cake; she again refused. “How could she
tell where I had got the handkerchief?” she said.

“Would she take my gloves?”

“No! what could she do with them?”

Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say there is
enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I can
scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral degradation,
blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a recollection ever to
be willingly dwelt on. I blamed none of those who repulsed me. I felt it was
what was to be expected, and what could not be helped: an ordinary beggar is
frequently an object of suspicion; a well-dressed beggar inevitably so. To be
sure, what I begged was employment; but whose business was it to provide me
with employment? Not, certainly, that of persons who saw me then for the first
time, and who knew nothing about my character. And as to the woman who would
not take my handkerchief in exchange for her bread, why, she was right, if the
offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable. Let me condense
now. I am sick of the subject.

A little before dark I passed a farm-house, at the open door of which the
farmer was sitting, eating his supper of bread and cheese. I stopped and said—

“Will you give me a piece of bread? for I am very hungry.” He cast on me a
glance of surprise; but without answering, he cut a thick slice from his loaf,
and gave it to me. I imagine he did not think I was a beggar, but only an
eccentric sort of lady, who had taken a fancy to his brown loaf. As soon as I
was out of sight of his house, I sat down and ate it.

I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sought it in the wood I
have before alluded to. But my night was wretched, my rest broken: the ground
was damp, the air cold: besides, intruders passed near me more than once, and I
had again and again to change my quarters: no sense of safety or tranquillity
befriended me. Towards morning it rained; the whole of the following day was
wet. Do not ask me, reader, to give a minute account of that day; as before, I
sought work; as before, I was repulsed; as before, I starved; but once did food
pass my lips. At the door of a cottage I saw a little girl about to throw a
mess of cold porridge into a pig trough. “Will you give me that?” I asked.

She stared at me. “Mother!” she exclaimed, “there is a woman wants me to give
her these porridge.”

“Well lass,” replied a voice within, “give it her if she’s a beggar. T’ pig
doesn’t want it.”

The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it
ravenously.

As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridle-path, which I had
been pursuing an hour or more.

“My strength is quite failing me,” I said in a soliloquy. “I feel I cannot go
much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night? While the rain descends
so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched ground? I fear I cannot do
otherwise: for who will receive me? But it will be very dreadful, with this
feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this sense of desolation—this total
prostration of hope. In all likelihood, though, I should die before morning.
And why cannot I reconcile myself to the prospect of death? Why do I struggle
to retain a valueless life? Because I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester is
living: and then, to die of want and cold is a fate to which nature cannot
submit passively. Oh, Providence! sustain me a little longer! Aid!—direct me!”

My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape. I saw I had strayed
far from the village: it was quite out of sight. The very cultivation
surrounding it had disappeared. I had, by cross-ways and by-paths, once more
drawn near the tract of moorland; and now, only a few fields, almost as wild
and unproductive as the heath from which they were scarcely reclaimed, lay
between me and the dusky hill.

“Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented road,” I
reflected. “And far better that crows and ravens—if any ravens there be in
these regions—should pick my flesh from my bones, than that they should be
prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper’s grave.”

To the hill, then, I turned. I reached it. It remained now only to find a
hollow where I could lie down, and feel at least hidden, if not secure. But all
the surface of the waste looked level. It showed no variation but of tint:
green, where rush and moss overgrew the marshes; black, where the dry soil bore
only heath. Dark as it was getting, I could still see these changes, though but
as mere alternations of light and shade; for colour had faded with the
daylight.

My eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the moor-edge, vanishing
amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in among the marshes and
the ridges, a light sprang up. “That is an ignis fatuus,” was my first
thought; and I expected it would soon vanish. It burnt on, however, quite
steadily, neither receding nor advancing. “Is it, then, a bonfire just
kindled?” I questioned. I watched to see whether it would spread: but no; as it
did not diminish, so it did not enlarge. “It may be a candle in a house,” I
then conjectured; “but if so, I can never reach it. It is much too far away:
and were it within a yard of me, what would it avail? I should but knock at the
door to have it shut in my face.”

And I sank down where I stood, and hid my face against the ground. I lay still
a while: the night-wind swept over the hill and over me, and died moaning in
the distance; the rain fell fast, wetting me afresh to the skin. Could I but
have stiffened to the still frost—the friendly numbness of death—it might have
pelted on; I should not have felt it; but my yet living flesh shuddered at its
chilling influence. I rose ere long.

The light was yet there, shining dim but constant through the rain. I tried to
walk again: I dragged my exhausted limbs slowly towards it. It led me aslant
over the hill, through a wide bog, which would have been impassable in winter,
and was splashy and shaking even now, in the height of summer. Here I fell
twice; but as often I rose and rallied my faculties. This light was my forlorn
hope: I must gain it.

Having crossed the marsh, I saw a trace of white over the moor. I approached
it; it was a road or a track: it led straight up to the light, which now beamed
from a sort of knoll, amidst a clump of trees—firs, apparently, from what I
could distinguish of the character of their forms and foliage through the
gloom. My star vanished as I drew near: some obstacle had intervened between me
and it. I put out my hand to feel the dark mass before me: I discriminated the
rough stones of a low wall—above it, something like palisades, and within, a
high and prickly hedge. I groped on. Again a whitish object gleamed before me:
it was a gate—a wicket; it moved on its hinges as I touched it. On each side
stood a sable bush—holly or yew.

Entering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house rose to
view, black, low, and rather long; but the guiding light shone nowhere. All was
obscurity. Were the inmates retired to rest? I feared it must be so. In seeking
the door, I turned an angle: there shot out the friendly gleam again, from the
lozenged panes of a very small latticed window, within a foot of the ground,
made still smaller by the growth of ivy or some other creeping plant, whose
leaves clustered thick over the portion of the house wall in which it was set.
The aperture was so screened and narrow, that curtain or shutter had been
deemed unnecessary; and when I stooped down and put aside the spray of foliage
shooting over it, I could see all within. I could see clearly a room with a
sanded floor, clean scoured; a dresser of walnut, with pewter plates ranged in
rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a glowing peat-fire. I could see a
clock, a white deal table, some chairs. The candle, whose ray had been my
beacon, burnt on the table; and by its light an elderly woman, somewhat
rough-looking, but scrupulously clean, like all about her, was knitting a
stocking.

I noticed these objects cursorily only—in them there was nothing extraordinary.
A group of more interest appeared near the hearth, sitting still amidst the
rosy peace and warmth suffusing it. Two young, graceful women—ladies in every
point—sat, one in a low rocking-chair, the other on a lower stool; both wore
deep mourning of crape and bombazeen, which sombre garb singularly set off very
fair necks and faces: a large old pointer dog rested its massive head on the
knee of one girl—in the lap of the other was cushioned a black cat.

A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants! Who were they? They
could not be the daughters of the elderly person at the table; for she looked
like a rustic, and they were all delicacy and cultivation. I had nowhere seen
such faces as theirs: and yet, as I gazed on them, I seemed intimate with every
lineament. I cannot call them handsome—they were too pale and grave for the
word: as they each bent over a book, they looked thoughtful almost to severity.
A stand between them supported a second candle and two great volumes, to which
they frequently referred, comparing them, seemingly, with the smaller books
they held in their hands, like people consulting a dictionary to aid them in
the task of translation. This scene was as silent as if all the figures had
been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture: so hushed was it, I could
hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock tick in its obscure corner; and
I even fancied I could distinguish the click-click of the woman’s
knitting-needles. When, therefore, a voice broke the strange stillness at last,
it was audible enough to me.

“Listen, Diana,” said one of the absorbed students; “Franz and old Daniel are
together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream from which he has
awakened in terror—listen!” And in a low voice she read something, of which not
one word was intelligible to me; for it was in an unknown tongue—neither French
nor Latin. Whether it were Greek or German I could not tell.

“That is strong,” she said, when she had finished: “I relish it.” The other
girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated, while she
gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read. At a later day, I knew the
language and the book; therefore, I will here quote the line: though, when I
first heard it, it was only like a stroke on sounding brass to me—conveying no
meaning:—

“‘Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.’ Good! good!” she
exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled. “There you have a dim and
mighty archangel fitly set before you! The line is worth a hundred pages of
fustian. ‘Ich wäge die Gedanken in der Schale meines Zornes und die Werke
mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.’ I like it!”

Both were again silent.

“Is there ony country where they talk i’ that way?” asked the old woman,
looking up from her knitting.

“Yes, Hannah—a far larger country than England, where they talk in no other
way.”

“Well, for sure case, I knawn’t how they can understand t’ one t’other: and if
either o’ ye went there, ye could tell what they said, I guess?”

“We could probably tell something of what they said, but not all—for we are not
as clever as you think us, Hannah. We don’t speak German, and we cannot read it
without a dictionary to help us.”

“And what good does it do you?”

“We mean to teach it some time—or at least the elements, as they say; and then
we shall get more money than we do now.”

“Varry like: but give ower studying; ye’ve done enough for to-night.”

“I think we have: at least I’m tired. Mary, are you?”

“Mortally: after all, it’s tough work fagging away at a language with no master
but a lexicon.”

“It is, especially such a language as this crabbed but glorious Deutsch. I
wonder when St. John will come home.”

“Surely he will not be long now: it is just ten (looking at a little gold watch
she drew from her girdle). It rains fast, Hannah: will you have the goodness to
look at the fire in the parlour?”

The woman rose: she opened a door, through which I dimly saw a passage: soon I
heard her stir a fire in an inner room; she presently came back.

“Ah, childer!” said she, “it fair troubles me to go into yond’ room now: it
looks so lonesome wi’ the chair empty and set back in a corner.”

She wiped her eyes with her apron: the two girls, grave before, looked sad now.

“But he is in a better place,” continued Hannah: “we shouldn’t wish him here
again. And then, nobody need to have a quieter death nor he had.”

“You say he never mentioned us?” inquired one of the ladies.

“He hadn’t time, bairn: he was gone in a minute, was your father. He had been a
bit ailing like the day before, but naught to signify; and when Mr. St. John
asked if he would like either o’ ye to be sent for, he fair laughed at him. He
began again with a bit of a heaviness in his head the next day—that is, a
fortnight sin’—and he went to sleep and niver wakened: he wor a’most stark when
your brother went into t’ chamber and fand him. Ah, childer! that’s t’ last o’
t’ old stock—for ye and Mr. St. John is like of different soart to them ’at’s
gone; for all your mother wor mich i’ your way, and a’most as book-learned. She
wor the pictur’ o’ ye, Mary: Diana is more like your father.”

I thought them so similar I could not tell where the old servant (for such I
now concluded her to be) saw the difference. Both were fair complexioned and
slenderly made; both possessed faces full of distinction and intelligence. One,
to be sure, had hair a shade darker than the other, and there was a difference
in their style of wearing it; Mary’s pale brown locks were parted and braided
smooth: Diana’s duskier tresses covered her neck with thick curls. The clock
struck ten.

“Ye’ll want your supper, I am sure,” observed Hannah; “and so will Mr. St. John
when he comes in.”

And she proceeded to prepare the meal. The ladies rose; they seemed about to
withdraw to the parlour. Till this moment, I had been so intent on watching
them, their appearance and conversation had excited in me so keen an interest,
I had half-forgotten my own wretched position: now it recurred to me. More
desolate, more desperate than ever, it seemed from contrast. And how impossible
did it appear to touch the inmates of this house with concern on my behalf; to
make them believe in the truth of my wants and woes—to induce them to vouchsafe
a rest for my wanderings! As I groped out the door, and knocked at it
hesitatingly, I felt that last idea to be a mere chimera. Hannah opened.

“What do you want?” she inquired, in a voice of surprise, as she surveyed me by
the light of the candle she held.

“May I speak to your mistresses?” I said.

“You had better tell me what you have to say to them. Where do you come from?”

“I am a stranger.”

“What is your business here at this hour?”

“I want a night’s shelter in an out-house or anywhere, and a morsel of bread to
eat.”

Distrust, the very feeling I dreaded, appeared in Hannah’s face. “I’ll give you
a piece of bread,” she said, after a pause; “but we can’t take in a vagrant to
lodge. It isn’t likely.”

“Do let me speak to your mistresses.”

“No, not I. What can they do for you? You should not be roving about now; it
looks very ill.”

“But where shall I go if you drive me away? What shall I do?”

“Oh, I’ll warrant you know where to go and what to do. Mind you don’t do wrong,
that’s all. Here is a penny; now go—”

“A penny cannot feed me, and I have no strength to go farther. Don’t shut the
door:—oh, don’t, for God’s sake!”

“I must; the rain is driving in—”

“Tell the young ladies. Let me see them—”

“Indeed, I will not. You are not what you ought to be, or you wouldn’t make
such a noise. Move off.”

“But I must die if I am turned away.”

“Not you. I’m fear’d you have some ill plans agate, that bring you about folk’s
houses at this time o’ night. If you’ve any followers—housebreakers or such
like—anywhere near, you may tell them we are not by ourselves in the house; we
have a gentleman, and dogs, and guns.” Here the honest but inflexible servant
clapped the door to and bolted it within.

This was the climax. A pang of exquisite suffering—a throe of true despair—rent
and heaved my heart. Worn out, indeed, I was; not another step could I stir. I
sank on the wet doorstep: I groaned—I wrung my hands—I wept in utter anguish.
Oh, this spectre of death! Oh, this last hour, approaching in such horror!
Alas, this isolation—this banishment from my kind! Not only the anchor of hope,
but the footing of fortitude was gone—at least for a moment; but the last I
soon endeavoured to regain.

“I can but die,” I said, “and I believe in God. Let me try to wait His will in
silence.”

These words I not only thought, but uttered; and thrusting back all my misery
into my heart, I made an effort to compel it to remain there—dumb and still.

“All men must die,” said a voice quite close at hand; “but all are not
condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as yours would be if you
perished here of want.”

“Who or what speaks?” I asked, terrified at the unexpected sound, and incapable
now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid. A form was near—what form,
the pitch-dark night and my enfeebled vision prevented me from distinguishing.
With a loud long knock, the new-comer appealed to the door.

“Is it you, Mr. St. John?” cried Hannah.

“Yes—yes; open quickly.”

“Well, how wet and cold you must be, such a wild night as it is! Come in—your
sisters are quite uneasy about you, and I believe there are bad folks about.
There has been a beggar-woman—I declare she is not gone yet!—laid down there.
Get up! for shame! Move off, I say!”

“Hush, Hannah! I have a word to say to the woman. You have done your duty in
excluding, now let me do mine in admitting her. I was near, and listened to
both you and her. I think this is a peculiar case—I must at least examine into
it. Young woman, rise, and pass before me into the house.”

With difficulty I obeyed him. Presently I stood within that clean, bright
kitchen—on the very hearth—trembling, sickening; conscious of an aspect in the
last degree ghastly, wild, and weather-beaten. The two ladies, their brother,
Mr. St. John, the old servant, were all gazing at me.

“St. John, who is it?” I heard one ask.

“I cannot tell: I found her at the door,” was the reply.

“She does look white,” said Hannah.

“As white as clay or death,” was responded. “She will fall: let her sit.”

And indeed my head swam: I dropped, but a chair received me. I still possessed
my senses, though just now I could not speak.

“Perhaps a little water would restore her. Hannah, fetch some. But she is worn
to nothing. How very thin, and how very bloodless!”

“A mere spectre!”

“Is she ill, or only famished?”

“Famished, I think. Hannah, is that milk? Give it me, and a piece of bread.”

Diana (I knew her by the long curls which I saw drooping between me and the
fire as she bent over me) broke some bread, dipped it in milk, and put it to my
lips. Her face was near mine: I saw there was pity in it, and I felt sympathy
in her hurried breathing. In her simple words, too, the same balm-like emotion
spoke: “Try to eat.”

“Yes—try,” repeated Mary gently; and Mary’s hand removed my sodden bonnet and
lifted my head. I tasted what they offered me: feebly at first, eagerly soon.

“Not too much at first—restrain her,” said the brother; “she has had enough.”
And he withdrew the cup of milk and the plate of bread.

“A little more, St. John—look at the avidity in her eyes.”

“No more at present, sister. Try if she can speak now—ask her her name.”

I felt I could speak, and I answered—“My name is Jane Elliott.” Anxious as ever
to avoid discovery, I had before resolved to assume an alias.

“And where do you live? Where are your friends?”

I was silent.

“Can we send for any one you know?”

I shook my head.

“What account can you give of yourself?”

Somehow, now that I had once crossed the threshold of this house, and once was
brought face to face with its owners, I felt no longer outcast, vagrant, and
disowned by the wide world. I dared to put off the mendicant—to resume my
natural manner and character. I began once more to know myself; and when Mr.
St. John demanded an account—which at present I was far too weak to render—I
said after a brief pause—

“Sir, I can give you no details to-night.”

“But what, then,” said he, “do you expect me to do for you?”

“Nothing,” I replied. My strength sufficed for but short answers. Diana took
the word—

“Do you mean,” she asked, “that we have now given you what aid you require? and
that we may dismiss you to the moor and the rainy night?”

I looked at her. She had, I thought, a remarkable countenance, instinct both
with power and goodness. I took sudden courage. Answering her compassionate
gaze with a smile, I said—“I will trust you. If I were a masterless and stray
dog, I know that you would not turn me from your hearth to-night: as it is, I
really have no fear. Do with me and for me as you like; but excuse me from much
discourse—my breath is short—I feel a spasm when I speak.” All three surveyed
me, and all three were silent.

“Hannah,” said Mr. St. John, at last, “let her sit there at present, and ask
her no questions; in ten minutes more, give her the remainder of that milk and
bread. Mary and Diana, let us go into the parlour and talk the matter over.”

They withdrew. Very soon one of the ladies returned—I could not tell which. A
kind of pleasant stupor was stealing over me as I sat by the genial fire. In an
undertone she gave some directions to Hannah. Ere long, with the servant’s aid,
I contrived to mount a staircase; my dripping clothes were removed; soon a
warm, dry bed received me. I thanked God—experienced amidst unutterable
exhaustion a glow of grateful joy—and slept.