CHAPTER XXXVI

The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or two with
arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe, in the order wherein
I should wish to leave them during a brief absence. Meantime, I heard St. John
quit his room. He stopped at my door: I feared he would knock—no, but a slip of
paper was passed under the door. I took it up. It bore these words—

“You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little longer, you
would have laid your hand on the Christian’s cross and the angel’s crown. I
shall expect your clear decision when I return this day fortnight. Meantime,
watch and pray that you enter not into temptation: the spirit, I trust, is
willing, but the flesh, I see, is weak. I shall pray for you hourly.—Yours,
ST. JOHN.”
TOHN
“My spirit,” I answered mentally, “is willing to do what is right; and my
flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven, when once
that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate, it shall be strong enough to
search—inquire—to grope an outlet from this cloud of doubt, and find the open
day of certainty.”

It was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and chilly: rain beat
fast on my casement. I heard the front-door open, and St. John pass out.
Looking through the window, I saw him traverse the garden. He took the way over
the misty moors in the direction of Whitcross—there he would meet the coach.

“In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin,” thought I: “I
too have a coach to meet at Whitcross. I too have some to see and ask after in
England, before I depart for ever.”

It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time. I filled the interval in walking
softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which had given my plans
their present bent. I recalled that inward sensation I had experienced: for I
could recall it, with all its unspeakable strangeness. I recalled the voice I
had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in
me—not in the external world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression—a
delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration. The
wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the
foundations of Paul and Silas’s prison; it had opened the doors of the soul’s
cell and loosed its bands—it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang
trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled ear,
and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which neither feared nor shook,
but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it had been privileged
to make, independent of the cumbrous body.
me
“Ere many days,” I said, as I terminated my musings, “I will know something of
him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Letters have proved of no
avail—personal inquiry shall replace them.”

At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a journey, and
should be absent at least four days.

“Alone, Jane?” they asked.

“Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for some time
been uneasy.”

They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they had believed
me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed, I had often said so; but,
with their true natural delicacy, they abstained from comment, except that
Diana asked me if I was sure I was well enough to travel. I looked very pale,
she observed. I replied, that nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I
hoped soon to alleviate.

It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled with no
inquiries—no surmises. Having once explained to them that I could not now be
explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely acquiesced in the silence with
which I pursued them, according to me the privilege of free action I should
under similar circumstances have accorded them.

I left Moor House at three o’clock P.M., and soon after four I
stood at the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival of the
coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst the silence of those
solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it approach from a great distance. It
was the same vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted one summer evening on
this very spot—how desolate, and hopeless, and objectless! It stopped as I
beckoned. I entered—not now obliged to part with my whole fortune as the price
of its accommodation. Once more on the road to Thornfield, I felt like the
messenger-pigeon flying home.
P.M.
It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from Whitcross on a
Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday morning the coach
stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn, situated in the midst of scenery
whose green hedges and large fields and low pastoral hills (how mild of feature
and verdant of hue compared with the stern North-Midland moors of Morton!) met
my eye like the lineaments of a once familiar face. Yes, I knew the character
of this landscape: I was sure we were near my bourne.

“How far is Thornfield Hall from here?” I asked of the ostler.

“Just two miles, ma’am, across the fields.”

“My journey is closed,” I thought to myself. I got out of the coach, gave a box
I had into the ostler’s charge, to be kept till I called for it; paid my fare;
satisfied the coachman, and was going: the brightening day gleamed on the sign
of the inn, and I read in gilt letters, “The Rochester Arms.” My heart leapt
up: I was already on my master’s very lands. It fell again: the thought struck
it:—

“Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you know: and
then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you hasten, who besides him is
there? His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do with him: you dare not
speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost your labour—you had better go
no farther,” urged the monitor. “Ask information of the people at the inn; they
can give you all you seek: they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to that
man, and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home.”

The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on it. I
so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong doubt was to
prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the ray of her star.
There was the stile before me—the very fields through which I had hurried,
blind, deaf, distracted with a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me, on
the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I well knew what course I had resolved
to take, I was in the midst of them. How fast I walked! How I ran sometimes!
How I looked forward to catch the first view of the well-known woods! With what
feelings I welcomed single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and
hill between them!

At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing broke the
morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on I hastened. Another field
crossed—a lane threaded—and there were the courtyard walls—the back offices:
the house itself, the rookery still hid. “My first view of it shall be in
front,” I determined, “where its bold battlements will strike the eye nobly at
once, and where I can single out my master’s very window: perhaps he will be
standing at it—he rises early: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on
the pavement in front. Could I but see him!—but a moment! Surely, in that case,
I should not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell—I am not certain. And if
I did—what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be hurt by my once more
tasting the life his glance can give me? I rave: perhaps at this moment he is
watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees, or on the tideless sea of the south.”

I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard—turned its angle: there was a
gate just there, opening into the meadow, between two stone pillars crowned by
stone balls. From behind one pillar I could peep round quietly at the full
front of the mansion. I advanced my head with precaution, desirous to ascertain
if any bedroom window-blinds were yet drawn up: battlements, windows, long
front—all from this sheltered station were at my command.

The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this survey. I
wonder what they thought. They must have considered I was very careful and
timid at first, and that gradually I grew very bold and reckless. A peep, and
then a long stare; and then a departure from my niche and a straying out into
the meadow; and a sudden stop full in front of the great mansion, and a
protracted, hardy gaze towards it. “What affectation of diffidence was this at
first?” they might have demanded; “what stupid regardlessness now?”

Hear an illustration, reader.

A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a glimpse
of her fair face without waking her. He steals softly over the grass, careful
to make no sound; he pauses—fancying she has stirred: he withdraws: not for
worlds would he be seen. All is still: he again advances: he bends above her; a
light veil rests on her features: he lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes
anticipate the vision of beauty—warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How
hurried was their first glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How he
suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a moment
since, touch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden,
and gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no
longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter—by any movement he can make. He
thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone dead.

I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened ruin.

No need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed!—to peep up at chamber lattices,
fearing life was astir behind them! No need to listen for doors opening—to
fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk! The lawn, the grounds were
trodden and waste: the portal yawned void. The front was, as I had once seen it
in a dream, but a shell-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking,
perforated with paneless windows: no roof, no battlements, no chimneys—all had
crashed in.

And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a lonesome wild.
No wonder that letters addressed to people here had never received an answer:
as well despatch epistles to a vault in a church aisle. The grim blackness of
the stones told by what fate the Hall had fallen—by conflagration: but how
kindled? What story belonged to this disaster? What loss, besides mortar and
marble and wood-work had followed upon it? Had life been wrecked as well as
property? If so, whose? Dreadful question: there was no one here to answer
it—not even dumb sign, mute token.

In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated interior, I
gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late occurrence. Winter snows, I
thought, had drifted through that void arch, winter rains beaten in at those
hollow casements; for, amidst the drenched piles of rubbish, spring had
cherished vegetation: grass and weed grew here and there between the stones and
fallen rafters. And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck? In
what land? Under what auspices? My eye involuntarily wandered to the grey
church tower near the gates, and I asked, “Is he with Damer de Rochester,
sharing the shelter of his narrow marble house?”

Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere but at the
inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himself brought my breakfast
into the parlour. I requested him to shut the door and sit down: I had some
questions to ask him. But when he complied, I scarcely knew how to begin; such
horror had I of the possible answers. And yet the spectacle of desolation I had
just left prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery. The host was a
respectable-looking, middle-aged man.

“You know Thornfield Hall, of course?” I managed to say at last.

“Yes, ma’am; I lived there once.”

“Did you?” Not in my time, I thought: you are a stranger to me.

“I was the late Mr. Rochester’s butler,” he added.

The late! I seem to have received, with full force, the blow I had been trying
to evade.

“The late!” I gasped. “Is he dead?”

“I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward’s father,” he explained. I breathed
again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully assured by these words that Mr.
Edward—my Mr. Rochester (God bless him, wherever he was!)—was at least
alive: was, in short, “the present gentleman.” Gladdening words! It seemed I
could hear all that was to come—whatever the disclosures might be—with
comparative tranquillity. Since he was not in the grave, I could bear, I
thought, to learn that he was at the Antipodes.
my
“Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?” I asked, knowing, of course,
what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring the direct question as
to where he really was.

“No, ma’am—oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a stranger in
these parts, or you would have heard what happened last autumn,—Thornfield Hall
is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about harvest-time. A dreadful
calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable property destroyed: hardly any
of the furniture could be saved. The fire broke out at dead of night, and
before the engines arrived from Millcote, the building was one mass of flame.
It was a terrible spectacle: I witnessed it myself.”

“At dead of night!” I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour of fatality at
Thornfield. “Was it known how it originated?” I demanded.

“They guessed, ma’am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was ascertained
beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware,” he continued, edging his chair a
little nearer the table, and speaking low, “that there was a lady—a—a lunatic,
kept in the house?”

“I have heard something of it.”

“She was kept in very close confinement, ma’am; people even for some years was
not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw her: they only knew by
rumour that such a person was at the Hall; and who or what she was it was
difficult to conjecture. They said Mr. Edward had brought her from abroad, and
some believed she had been his mistress. But a queer thing happened a year
since—a very queer thing.”

I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to the main
fact.

“And this lady?”

“This lady, ma’am,” he answered, “turned out to be Mr. Rochester’s wife! The
discovery was brought about in the strangest way. There was a young lady, a
governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in—”

“But the fire,” I suggested.

“I’m coming to that, ma’am—that Mr. Edward fell in love with. The servants say
they never saw anybody so much in love as he was: he was after her continually.
They used to watch him—servants will, you know, ma’am—and he set store on her
past everything: for all, nobody but him thought her so very handsome. She was
a little small thing, they say, almost like a child. I never saw her myself;
but I’ve heard Leah, the house-maid, tell of her. Leah liked her well enough.
Mr. Rochester was about forty, and this governess not twenty; and you see, when
gentlemen of his age fall in love with girls, they are often like as if they
were bewitched. Well, he would marry her.”

“You shall tell me this part of the story another time,” I said; “but now I
have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about the fire. Was it
suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had any hand in it?”

“You’ve hit it, ma’am: it’s quite certain that it was her, and nobody but her,
that set it going. She had a woman to take care of her called Mrs. Poole—an
able woman in her line, and very trustworthy, but for one fault—a fault common
to a deal of them nurses and matrons—she kept a private bottle of gin by
her, and now and then took a drop over-much. It is excusable, for she had a
hard life of it: but still it was dangerous; for when Mrs. Poole was fast
asleep after the gin and water, the mad lady, who was as cunning as a witch,
would take the keys out of her pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go
roaming about the house, doing any wild mischief that came into her head. They
say she had nearly burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don’t know about
that. However, on this night, she set fire first to the hangings of the room
next her own, and then she got down to a lower storey, and made her way to the
chamber that had been the governess’s—(she was like as if she knew somehow how
matters had gone on, and had a spite at her)—and she kindled the bed there; but
there was nobody sleeping in it, fortunately. The governess had run away two
months before; and for all Mr. Rochester sought her as if she had been the most
precious thing he had in the world, he never could hear a word of her; and he
grew savage—quite savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but he
got dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent Mrs. Fairfax,
the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did it handsomely,
for he settled an annuity on her for life: and she deserved it—she was a very
good woman. Miss Adèle, a ward he had, was put to school. He broke off
acquaintance with all the gentry, and shut himself up like a hermit at the
Hall.”
she kept a private bottle of gin by
her
“What! did he not leave England?”

“Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stones of the house,
except at night, when he walked just like a ghost about the grounds and in the
orchard as if he had lost his senses—which it is my opinion he had; for a more
spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he was before that midge of a governess
crossed him, you never saw, ma’am. He was not a man given to wine, or cards, or
racing, as some are, and he was not so very handsome; but he had a courage and
a will of his own, if ever man had. I knew him from a boy, you see: and for my
part, I have often wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she
came to Thornfield Hall.”

“Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?”

“Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was burning above
and below, and got the servants out of their beds and helped them down himself,
and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And then they called out to
him that she was on the roof, where she was standing, waving her arms, above
the battlements, and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off: I saw
her and heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had long black
hair: we could see it streaming against the flames as she stood. I witnessed,
and several more witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend through the sky-light on to
the roof; we heard him call ‘Bertha!’ We saw him approach her; and then, ma’am,
she yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the
pavement.”

“Dead?”

“Dead! Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were scattered.”

“Good God!”

“You may well say so, ma’am: it was frightful!”

He shuddered.

“And afterwards?” I urged.

“Well, ma’am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: there are only some
bits of walls standing now.”

“Were any other lives lost?”

“No—perhaps it would have been better if there had.”

“What do you mean?”

“Poor Mr. Edward!” he ejaculated, “I little thought ever to have seen it! Some
say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his first marriage secret, and
wanting to take another wife while he had one living: but I pity him, for my
part.”

“You said he was alive?” I exclaimed.

“Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better be dead.”

“Why? How?” My blood was again running cold. “Where is he?” I demanded. “Is he
in England?”

“Ay—ay—he’s in England; he can’t get out of England, I fancy—he’s a fixture
now.”

What agony was this! And the man seemed resolved to protract it.

“He is stone-blind,” he said at last. “Yes, he is stone-blind, is Mr. Edward.”

I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strength to ask what
had caused this calamity.

“It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a way, ma’am:
he wouldn’t leave the house till every one else was out before him. As he came
down the great staircase at last, after Mrs. Rochester had flung herself from
the battlements, there was a great crash—all fell. He was taken out from under
the ruins, alive, but sadly hurt: a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect
him partly; but one eye was knocked out, and one hand so crushed that Mr.
Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed: he
lost the sight of that also. He is now helpless, indeed—blind and a cripple.”

“Where is he? Where does he now live?”

“At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off: quite a
desolate spot.”

“Who is with him?”

“Old John and his wife: he would have none else. He is quite broken down, they
say.”

“Have you any sort of conveyance?”

“We have a chaise, ma’am, a very handsome chaise.”

“Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me to Ferndean
before dark this day, I’ll pay both you and him twice the hire you usually
demand.”

CHAPTER XXXVII

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

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

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

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

“Can there be life here?” I asked.

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

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

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

His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever: his port was
still erect, his hair was still raven black; nor were his features altered or
sunk: not in one year’s space, by any sorrow, could his athletic strength be
quelled or his vigorous prime blighted. But in his countenance I saw a change:
that looked desperate and brooding—that reminded me of some wronged and
fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous to approach in his sullen woe. The caged
eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked
that sightless Samson.

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

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

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

“Let me alone,” was the answer.

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

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

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

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

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

When she returned, I inquired what he had said.

“You are to send in your name and your business,” she replied. She then
proceeded to fill a glass with water, and place it on a tray, together with
candles.

“Is that what he rang for?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

“Give me the water, Mary,” he said.

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

“What is the matter?” he inquired.

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

“Mary is in the kitchen,” I answered.

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

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

“Who is it? What is it? Who speaks?”

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

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

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

“And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I cannot see, but I
must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst. Whatever—whoever you
are—be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There, sir—and there!”’

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

“It is you—is it, Jane? You are come back to me then?”

“I am.”

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

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

“Independent! What do you mean, Jane?”

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

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

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

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

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

“And you will stay with me?”

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

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

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

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

“Yes—but you understand one thing by staying with me; and I understand another.
You, perhaps, could make up your mind to be about my hand and chair—to wait on
me as a kind little nurse (for you have an affectionate heart and a generous
spirit, which prompt you to make sacrifices for those you pity), and that ought
to suffice for me no doubt. I suppose I should now entertain none but fatherly
feelings for you: do you think so? Come—tell me.”

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

“But you cannot always be my nurse, Janet: you are young—you must marry one
day.”

“I don’t care about being married.”

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

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

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

“On this arm, I have neither hand nor nails,” he said, drawing the mutilated
limb from his breast, and showing it to me. “It is a mere stump—a ghastly
sight! Don’t you think so, Jane?”

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

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

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

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

“And you see the candles?”

“Very dimly—each is a luminous cloud.”

“Can you see me?”

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

“When do you take supper?”

“I never take supper.”

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

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

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

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

“I conscientiously believe so, Mr. Rochester.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What for, Jane?”

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

“Am I hideous, Jane?”

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

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

“Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a hundred times better
people; possessed of ideas and views you never entertained in your life: quite
more refined and exalted.”

“Who the deuce have you been with?”

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

“Who have you been with, Jane?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I had wakened the glow: his features beamed.

“Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark! Come to me. You are not gone: not
vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over the wood: but
its song had no music for me, any more than the rising sun had rays. All the
melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane’s tongue to my ear (I am glad it is
not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

“St John was only twenty-nine, sir.”

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

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

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

“He talks little, sir: what he does say is ever to the point. His brain is
first-rate, I should think not impressible, but vigorous.”

“Is he an able man, then?”

“Truly able.”

“A thoroughly educated man?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why not, Mr. Rochester?”

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

“I never thought of it, before; but you certainly are rather like Vulcan, sir.”

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

“What questions, Mr. Rochester?”

Then followed this cross-examination.

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

“Yes.”

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

“Daily.”

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

“He approved of them—yes.”

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

“I don’t know about that.”

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

“Now and then.”

“Of an evening?”

“Once or twice.”

A pause.

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

“Five months.”

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

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

“Did he study much?”

“A good deal.”

“What?”

“Hindostanee.”

“And what did you do meantime?”

“I learnt German, at first.”

“Did he teach you?”

“He did not understand German.”

“Did he teach you nothing?”

“A little Hindostanee.”

“Rivers taught you Hindostanee?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And his sisters also?”

“No.”

“Only you?”

“Only me.”

“Did you ask to learn?”

“No.”

“He wished to teach you?”

“Yes.”

A second pause.

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

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

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

“He asked me to marry him.”

“That is a fiction—an impudent invention to vex me.”

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

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

“Because I am comfortable there.”

“No, Jane, you are not comfortable there, because your heart is not with me: it
is with this cousin—this St. John. Oh, till this moment, I thought my little
Jane was all mine! I had a belief she loved me even when she left me: that was
an atom of sweet in much bitter. Long as we have been parted, hot tears as I
have wept over our separation, I never thought that while I was mourning her,
she was loving another! But it is useless grieving. Jane, leave me: go and
marry Rivers.”

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

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

“Where must I go, sir?”

“Your own way—with the husband you have chosen.”

“Who is that?”

“You know—this St. John Rivers.”

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

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

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

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

Again, as he kissed me, painful thoughts darkened his aspect.

“My seared vision! My crippled strength!” he murmured regretfully.

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

“I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield
orchard,” he remarked ere long. “And what right would that ruin have to bid a
budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?”

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

Again he smiled: I gave him comfort.

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

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

“Ah! Jane. But I want a wife.”

“Do you, sir?”

“Yes: is it news to you?”

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

“Is it unwelcome news?”

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

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

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

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

“Yes, sir.”

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

“Yes, sir.”

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

“Yes, sir.”

“Truly, Jane?”

“Most truly, sir.”

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

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

“Because you delight in sacrifice.”

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

“And to bear with my infirmities, Jane: to overlook my deficiencies.”

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

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

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

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

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

“We must become one flesh without any delay, Jane: there is but the licence to
get—then we marry.”

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

“Fasten it into your girdle, Janet, and keep it henceforward: I have no use for
it.”

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

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

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

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

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

He pursued his own thoughts without heeding me.

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

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

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

“Did you speak these words aloud?”

“I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought me mad: I
pronounced them with such frantic energy.”

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

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

“As I exclaimed ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ a voice—I cannot tell whence the voice
came, but I know whose voice it was—replied, ‘I am coming: wait for me;’ and a
moment after, went whispering on the wind the words—‘Where are you?’

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

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

“You cannot now wonder,” continued my master, “that when you rose upon me so
unexpectedly last night, I had difficulty in believing you any other than a
mere voice and vision, something that would melt to silence and annihilation,
as the midnight whisper and mountain echo had melted before. Now, I thank God!
I know it to be otherwise. Yes, I thank God!”

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

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

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