CHAPTER XXVI

Sophie came at seven to dress me: she was very long indeed in accomplishing her
task; so long that Mr. Rochester, grown, I suppose, impatient of my delay, sent
up to ask why I did not come. She was just fastening my veil (the plain square
of blond after all) to my hair with a brooch; I hurried from under her hands as
soon as I could.

“Stop!” she cried in French. “Look at yourself in the mirror: you have not
taken one peep.”

So I turned at the door: I saw a robed and veiled figure, so unlike my usual
self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger. “Jane!” called a voice, and
I hastened down. I was received at the foot of the stairs by Mr. Rochester.

“Lingerer!” he said, “my brain is on fire with impatience, and you tarry so
long!”

He took me into the dining-room, surveyed me keenly all over, pronounced me
“fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life, but the desire of his
eyes,” and then telling me he would give me but ten minutes to eat some
breakfast, he rang the bell. One of his lately hired servants, a footman,
answered it.

“Is John getting the carriage ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is the luggage brought down?”

“They are bringing it down, sir.”

“Go you to the church: see if Mr. Wood (the clergyman) and the clerk are there:
return and tell me.”

The church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates; the footman
soon returned.

“Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice.”

“And the carriage?”

“The horses are harnessing.”

“We shall not want it to go to church; but it must be ready the moment we
return: all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped on, and the coachman in
his seat.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Jane, are you ready?”

I rose. There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait for or
marshal: none but Mr. Rochester and I. Mrs. Fairfax stood in the hall as we
passed. I would fain have spoken to her, but my hand was held by a grasp of
iron: I was hurried along by a stride I could hardly follow; and to look at Mr.
Rochester’s face was to feel that not a second of delay would be tolerated for
any purpose. I wonder what other bridegroom ever looked as he did—so bent up to
a purpose, so grimly resolute: or who, under such steadfast brows, ever
revealed such flaming and flashing eyes.

I know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the drive, I gazed
neither on sky nor earth: my heart was with my eyes; and both seemed migrated
into Mr. Rochester’s frame. I wanted to see the invisible thing on which, as we
went along, he appeared to fasten a glance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel
the thoughts whose force he seemed breasting and resisting.

At the churchyard wicket he stopped: he discovered I was quite out of breath.
“Am I cruel in my love?” he said. “Delay an instant: lean on me, Jane.”

And now I can recall the picture of the grey old house of God rising calm
before me, of a rook wheeling round the steeple, of a ruddy morning sky beyond.
I remember something, too, of the green grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten,
either, two figures of strangers straying amongst the low hillocks and reading
the mementoes graven on the few mossy head-stones. I noticed them, because, as
they saw us, they passed round to the back of the church; and I doubted not
they were going to enter by the side-aisle door and witness the ceremony. By
Mr. Rochester they were not observed; he was earnestly looking at my face, from
which the blood had, I daresay, momentarily fled: for I felt my forehead dewy,
and my cheeks and lips cold. When I rallied, which I soon did, he walked gently
with me up the path to the porch.

We entered the quiet and humble temple; the priest waited in his white surplice
at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him. All was still: two shadows only moved
in a remote corner. My conjecture had been correct: the strangers had slipped
in before us, and they now stood by the vault of the Rochesters, their backs
towards us, viewing through the rails the old time-stained marble tomb, where a
kneeling angel guarded the remains of Damer de Rochester, slain at Marston Moor
in the time of the civil wars, and of Elizabeth, his wife.

Our place was taken at the communion rails. Hearing a cautious step behind me,
I glanced over my shoulder: one of the strangers—a gentleman, evidently—was
advancing up the chancel. The service began. The explanation of the intent of
matrimony was gone through; and then the clergyman came a step further forward,
and, bending slightly towards Mr. Rochester, went on.

“I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day of
judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed), that if either of
you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined together in
matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured that so many as are
coupled together otherwise than God’s Word doth allow, are not joined together
by God, neither is their matrimony lawful.”

He paused, as the custom is. When is the pause after that sentence ever broken
by reply? Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years. And the clergyman, who had not
lifted his eyes from his book, and had held his breath but for a moment, was
proceeding: his hand was already stretched towards Mr. Rochester, as his lips
unclosed to ask, “Wilt thou have this woman for thy wedded wife?”—when a
distinct and near voice said—

“The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment.”

The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute; the clerk did the same;
Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had rolled under his feet:
taking a firmer footing, and not turning his head or eyes, he said, “Proceed.”

Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with deep but low
intonation. Presently Mr. Wood said—

“I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been asserted, and
evidence of its truth or falsehood.”

“The ceremony is quite broken off,” subjoined the voice behind us. “I am in a
condition to prove my allegation: an insuperable impediment to this marriage
exists.”

Mr. Rochester heard, but heeded not: he stood stubborn and rigid, making no
movement but to possess himself of my hand. What a hot and strong grasp he had!
and how like quarried marble was his pale, firm, massive front at this moment!
How his eye shone, still watchful, and yet wild beneath!

Mr. Wood seemed at a loss. “What is the nature of the impediment?” he asked.
“Perhaps it may be got over—explained away?”

“Hardly,” was the answer. “I have called it insuperable, and I speak
advisedly.”

The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails. He continued, uttering each
word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not loudly—

“It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage. Mr. Rochester has
a wife now living.”

My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated to
thunder—my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt frost or fire;
but I was collected, and in no danger of swooning. I looked at Mr. Rochester: I
made him look at me. His whole face was colourless rock: his eye was both spark
and flint. He disavowed nothing: he seemed as if he would defy all things.
Without speaking, without smiling, without seeming to recognise in me a human
being, he only twined my waist with his arm and riveted me to his side.

“Who are you?” he asked of the intruder.

“My name is Briggs, a solicitor of —— Street, London.”

“And you would thrust on me a wife?”

“I would remind you of your lady’s existence, sir, which the law recognises, if
you do not.”

“Favour me with an account of her—with her name, her parentage, her place of
abode.”

“Certainly.” Mr. Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket, and read out in a
sort of official, nasal voice:—

“‘I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October A.D. —— (a date of fifteen
years back), Edward Fairfax Rochester, of Thornfield Hall, in the county of ——,
and of Ferndean Manor, in ——shire, England, was married to my sister, Bertha
Antoinetta Mason, daughter of Jonas Mason, merchant, and of Antoinetta his
wife, a Creole, at —— church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. The record of the marriage
will be found in the register of that church—a copy of it is now in my
possession. Signed, Richard Mason.’”

“That—if a genuine document—may prove I have been married, but it does not
prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is still living.”

“She was living three months ago,” returned the lawyer.

“How do you know?”

“I have a witness to the fact, whose testimony even you, sir, will scarcely
controvert.”

“Produce him—or go to hell.”

“I will produce him first—he is on the spot. Mr. Mason, have the goodness to
step forward.”

Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth; he experienced, too, a sort
of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the spasmodic
movement of fury or despair run through his frame. The second stranger, who had
hitherto lingered in the background, now drew near; a pale face looked over the
solicitor’s shoulder—yes, it was Mason himself. Mr. Rochester turned and glared
at him. His eye, as I have often said, was a black eye: it had now a tawny,
nay, a bloody light in its gloom; and his face flushed—olive cheek and hueless
forehead received a glow as from spreading, ascending heart-fire: and he
stirred, lifted his strong arm—he could have struck Mason, dashed him on the
church-floor, shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his body—but Mason
shrank away, and cried faintly, “Good God!” Contempt fell cool on Mr.
Rochester—his passion died as if a blight had shrivelled it up: he only
asked—“What have you to say?”
you
An inaudible reply escaped Mason’s white lips.

“The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly. I again demand, what have
you to say?”
you
“Sir—sir,” interrupted the clergyman, “do not forget you are in a sacred
place.” Then addressing Mason, he inquired gently, “Are you aware, sir, whether
or not this gentleman’s wife is still living?”

“Courage,” urged the lawyer,—“speak out.”

“She is now living at Thornfield Hall,” said Mason, in more articulate tones:
“I saw her there last April. I am her brother.”

“At Thornfield Hall!” ejaculated the clergyman. “Impossible! I am an old
resident in this neighbourhood, sir, and I never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at
Thornfield Hall.”

I saw a grim smile contort Mr. Rochester’s lips, and he muttered—

“No, by God! I took care that none should hear of it—or of her under that
name.” He mused—for ten minutes he held counsel with himself: he formed his
resolve, and announced it—

“Enough! all shall bolt out at once, like the bullet from the barrel. Wood,
close your book and take off your surplice; John Green (to the clerk), leave
the church: there will be no wedding to-day.” The man obeyed.

Mr. Rochester continued, hardily and recklessly: “Bigamy is an ugly word!—I
meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has out-manoeuvred me, or Providence
has checked me,—perhaps the last. I am little better than a devil at this
moment; and, as my pastor there would tell me, deserve no doubt the sternest
judgments of God, even to the quenchless fire and deathless worm. Gentlemen, my
plan is broken up:—what this lawyer and his client say is true: I have been
married, and the woman to whom I was married lives! You say you never heard of
a Mrs. Rochester at the house up yonder, Wood; but I daresay you have many a
time inclined your ear to gossip about the mysterious lunatic kept there under
watch and ward. Some have whispered to you that she is my bastard half-sister:
some, my cast-off mistress. I now inform you that she is my wife, whom I
married fifteen years ago,—Bertha Mason by name; sister of this resolute
personage, who is now, with his quivering limbs and white cheeks, showing you
what a stout heart men may bear. Cheer up, Dick!—never fear me!—I’d almost as
soon strike a woman as you. Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family;
idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both
a madwoman and a drunkard!—as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for
they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied
her parent in both points. I had a charming partner—pure, wise, modest: you can
fancy I was a happy man. I went through rich scenes! Oh! my experience has been
heavenly, if you only knew it! But I owe you no further explanation. Briggs,
Wood, Mason, I invite you all to come up to the house and visit Mrs. Poole’s
patient, and my wife! You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated
into espousing, and judge whether or not I had a right to break the compact,
and seek sympathy with something at least human. This girl,” he continued,
looking at me, “knew no more than you, Wood, of the disgusting secret: she
thought all was fair and legal; and never dreamt she was going to be entrapped
into a feigned union with a defrauded wretch, already bound to a bad, mad, and
embruted partner! Come all of you—follow!”
my wife
Still holding me fast, he left the church: the three gentlemen came after. At
the front door of the hall we found the carriage.

“Take it back to the coach-house, John,” said Mr. Rochester coolly; “it will
not be wanted to-day.”

At our entrance, Mrs. Fairfax, Adèle, Sophie, Leah, advanced to meet and greet
us.

“To the right-about—every soul!” cried the master; “away with your
congratulations! Who wants them? Not I!—they are fifteen years too late!”

He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and still
beckoning the gentlemen to follow him, which they did. We mounted the first
staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third storey: the low, black
door, opened by Mr. Rochester’s master-key, admitted us to the tapestried room,
with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet.

“You know this place, Mason,” said our guide; “she bit and stabbed you here.”

He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door: this, too, he
opened. In a room without a window, there burnt a fire guarded by a high and
strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a chain. Grace Poole
bent over the fire, apparently cooking something in a saucepan. In the deep
shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards.
What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell:
it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some
strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark,
grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.

“Good-morrow, Mrs. Poole!” said Mr. Rochester. “How are you? and how is your
charge to-day?”

“We’re tolerable, sir, I thank you,” replied Grace, lifting the boiling mess
carefully on to the hob: “rather snappish, but not ’rageous.”

A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favourable report: the clothed hyena
rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet.

“Ah! sir, she sees you!” exclaimed Grace: “you’d better not stay.”

“Only a few moments, Grace: you must allow me a few moments.”

“Take care then, sir!—for God’s sake, take care!”

The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and gazed
wildly at her visitors. I recognised well that purple face,—those bloated
features. Mrs. Poole advanced.

“Keep out of the way,” said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside: “she has no
knife now, I suppose, and I’m on my guard.”

“One never knows what she has, sir: she is so cunning: it is not in mortal
discretion to fathom her craft.”

“We had better leave her,” whispered Mason.

“Go to the devil!” was his brother-in-law’s recommendation.

“’Ware!” cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. Mr.
Rochester flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat
viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek: they struggled. She was a big
woman, in stature almost equalling her husband, and corpulent besides: she
showed virile force in the contest—more than once she almost throttled him,
athletic as he was. He could have settled her with a well-planted blow; but he
would not strike: he would only wrestle. At last he mastered her arms; Grace
Poole gave him a cord, and he pinioned them behind her: with more rope, which
was at hand, he bound her to a chair. The operation was performed amidst the
fiercest yells and the most convulsive plunges. Mr. Rochester then turned to
the spectators: he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate.

“That is my wife,” said he. “Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever
to know—such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure hours! And
this is what I wished to have” (laying his hand on my shoulder): “this
young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell, looking
collectedly at the gambols of a demon, I wanted her just as a change after that
fierce ragout. Wood and Briggs, look at the difference! Compare these clear
eyes with the red balls yonder—this face with that mask—this form with that
bulk; then judge me, priest of the gospel and man of the law, and remember with
what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged! Off with you now. I must shut up my
prize.”
my wifethis
We all withdrew. Mr. Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to give some further
order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me as he descended the stair.

“You, madam,” said he, “are cleared from all blame: your uncle will be glad to
hear it—if, indeed, he should be still living—when Mr. Mason returns to
Madeira.”

“My uncle! What of him? Do you know him?”

“Mr. Mason does. Mr. Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of his house for
some years. When your uncle received your letter intimating the contemplated
union between yourself and Mr. Rochester, Mr. Mason, who was staying at Madeira
to recruit his health, on his way back to Jamaica, happened to be with him. Mr.
Eyre mentioned the intelligence; for he knew that my client here was acquainted
with a gentleman of the name of Rochester. Mr. Mason, astonished and distressed
as you may suppose, revealed the real state of matters. Your uncle, I am sorry
to say, is now on a sick bed; from which, considering the nature of his
disease—decline—and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will ever rise.
He could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate you from the snare
into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason to lose no time in taking
steps to prevent the false marriage. He referred him to me for assistance. I
used all despatch, and am thankful I was not too late: as you, doubtless, must
be also. Were I not morally certain that your uncle will be dead ere you reach
Madeira, I would advise you to accompany Mr. Mason back; but as it is, I think
you had better remain in England till you can hear further, either from or of
Mr. Eyre. Have we anything else to stay for?” he inquired of Mr. Mason.

“No, no—let us be gone,” was the anxious reply; and without waiting to take
leave of Mr. Rochester, they made their exit at the hall door. The clergyman
stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of admonition or reproof, with his
haughty parishioner; this duty done, he too departed.

I heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room, to which I had
now withdrawn. The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the bolt that none
might intrude, and proceeded—not to weep, not to mourn, I was yet too calm for
that, but—mechanically to take off the wedding dress, and replace it by the
stuff gown I had worn yesterday, as I thought, for the last time. I then sat
down: I felt weak and tired. I leaned my arms on a table, and my head dropped
on them. And now I thought: till now I had only heard, seen, moved—followed up
and down where I was led or dragged—watched event rush on event, disclosure
open beyond disclosure: but now, I thought.
nowI thought
The morning had been a quiet morning enough—all except the brief scene with the
lunatic: the transaction in the church had not been noisy; there was no
explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no defiance or
challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken, a calmly pronounced
objection to the marriage made; some stern, short questions put by Mr.
Rochester; answers, explanations given, evidence adduced; an open admission of
the truth had been uttered by my master; then the living proof had been seen;
the intruders were gone, and all was over.

I was in my own room as usual—just myself, without obvious change: nothing had
smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me. And yet where was the Jane Eyre of
yesterday?—where was her life?—where were her prospects?

Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman—almost a bride, was a cold,
solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate. A
Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over
June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield
and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of
flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve
hours since waved leafy and fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread,
waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway. My hopes were all
dead—struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the
first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so
blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never
revive. I looked at my love: that feeling which was my master’s—which he had
created; it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle;
sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr. Rochester’s arms—it
could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him;
for faith was blighted—confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what
he had been; for he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice to
him; I would not say he had betrayed me; but the attribute of stainless truth
was gone from his idea, and from his presence I must go: that I
perceived well. When—how—whither, I could not yet discern; but he himself, I
doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield. Real affection, it seemed, he
could not have for me; it had been only fitful passion: that was balked; he
would want me no more. I should fear even to cross his path now: my view must
be hateful to him. Oh, how blind had been my eyes! How weak my conduct!
that
My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim round me, and
reflection came in as black and confused a flow. Self-abandoned, relaxed, and
effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river;
I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to
rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint, longing to be dead.
One idea only still throbbed life-like within me—a remembrance of God: it begot
an unuttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind,
as something that should be whispered, but no energy was found to express them—

“Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help.”

It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it—as I had
neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips—it came: in full
heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole consciousness of my life
lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and
mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described: in
truth, “the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing;
I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.”

CHAPTER XXVII

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

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

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

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

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

I rose up suddenly, terror-struck at the solitude which so ruthless a judge
haunted,—at the silence which so awful a voice filled. My head swam as I stood
erect. I perceived that I was sickening from excitement and inanition; neither
meat nor drink had passed my lips that day, for I had taken no breakfast. And,
with a strange pang, I now reflected that, long as I had been shut up here, no
message had been sent to ask how I was, or to invite me to come down: not even
little 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.”

“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.”

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—”

“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?”

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.”

“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?”

“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.

“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.

“It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry you. To tell me
that I had already a wife is empty mockery: you know now that I had but a
hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I feared a
stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early instilled prejudice:
I wanted to have you safe before hazarding confidences. This was cowardly: I
should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do
now—opened to you plainly my life of agony—described to you my hunger and
thirst after a higher and worthier existence—shown to you, not my
resolution (that word is weak), but my resistless bent to love
faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well loved in return. Then I
should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity and to give me yours.
Jane—give it me now.”

A pause.

“Why are you silent, Jane?”

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

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

“Mr. Rochester, I will not be yours.”

Another long silence.

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

“I do.”

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

“I do.”

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

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

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

“It would to obey you.”

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

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

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

“Then you will not yield?”

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors
against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as
loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. “Oh, comply!” it said. “Think of
his misery; think of his danger—look at his state when left alone; remember his
headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair—soothe him;
save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world
cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?”

Still indomitable was the reply—“I care for myself. The more solitary,
the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.
I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the
principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and
principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such
moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour;
stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I
might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always
believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite
insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can
count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I
have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.”

I did. Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so. His fury was
wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a moment, whatever followed; he
crossed the floor and seized my arm and grasped my waist. He seemed to devour
me with his flaming glance: physically, I felt, at the moment, powerless as
stubble exposed to the draught and glow of a furnace: mentally, I still
possessed my soul, and with it the certainty of ultimate safety. The soul,
fortunately, has an interpreter—often an unconscious, but still a truthful
interpreter—in the eye. My eye rose to his; and while I looked in his fierce
face I gave an involuntary sigh; his gripe was painful, and my over-taxed
strength almost exhausted.

“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.