CHAPTER XX

I had forgotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also to let down
my window-blind. The consequence was, that when the moon, which was full and
bright (for the night was fine), came in her course to that space in the sky
opposite my casement, and looked in at me through the unveiled panes, her
glorious gaze roused me. Awaking in the dead of night, I opened my eyes on her
disk—silver-white and crystal clear. It was beautiful, but too solemn: I half
rose, and stretched my arm to draw the curtain.

Good God! What a cry!

The night—its silence—its rest, was rent in twain by a savage, a sharp, a
shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield Hall.

My pulse stopped: my heart stood still; my stretched arm was paralysed. The cry
died, and was not renewed. Indeed, whatever being uttered that fearful shriek
could not soon repeat it: not the widest-winged condor on the Andes could,
twice in succession, send out such a yell from the cloud shrouding his eyrie.
The thing delivering such utterance must rest ere it could repeat the effort.

It came out of the third storey; for it passed overhead. And overhead—yes, in
the room just above my chamber-ceiling—I now heard a struggle: a deadly one it
seemed from the noise; and a half-smothered voice shouted—

“Help! help! help!” three times rapidly.

“Will no one come?” it cried; and then, while the staggering and stamping went
on wildly, I distinguished through plank and plaster:—

“Rochester! Rochester! for God’s sake, come!”

A chamber-door opened: some one ran, or rushed, along the gallery. Another step
stamped on the flooring above and something fell; and there was silence.

I had put on some clothes, though horror shook all my limbs; I issued from my
apartment. The sleepers were all aroused: ejaculations, terrified murmurs
sounded in every room; door after door unclosed; one looked out and another
looked out; the gallery filled. Gentlemen and ladies alike had quitted their
beds; and “Oh! what is it?”—“Who is hurt?”—“What has happened?”—“Fetch a
light!”—“Is it fire?”—“Are there robbers?”—“Where shall we run?” was demanded
confusedly on all hands. But for the moonlight they would have been in complete
darkness. They ran to and fro; they crowded together: some sobbed, some
stumbled: the confusion was inextricable.

“Where the devil is Rochester?” cried Colonel Dent. “I cannot find him in his
bed.”

“Here! here!” was shouted in return. “Be composed, all of you: I’m coming.”

And the door at the end of the gallery opened, and Mr. Rochester advanced with
a candle: he had just descended from the upper storey. One of the ladies ran to
him directly; she seized his arm: it was Miss Ingram.

“What awful event has taken place?” said she. “Speak! let us know the worst at
once!”

“But don’t pull me down or strangle me,” he replied: for the Misses Eshton were
clinging about him now; and the two dowagers, in vast white wrappers, were
bearing down on him like ships in full sail.

“All’s right!—all’s right!” he cried. “It’s a mere rehearsal of Much Ado about
Nothing. Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous.”

And dangerous he looked: his black eyes darted sparks. Calming himself by an
effort, he added—

“A servant has had the nightmare; that is all. She’s an excitable, nervous
person: she construed her dream into an apparition, or something of that sort,
no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright. Now, then, I must see you all back
into your rooms; for, till the house is settled, she cannot be looked after.
Gentlemen, have the goodness to set the ladies the example. Miss Ingram, I am
sure you will not fail in evincing superiority to idle terrors. Amy and Louisa,
return to your nests like a pair of doves, as you are. Mesdames” (to the
dowagers), “you will take cold to a dead certainty, if you stay in this chill
gallery any longer.”

And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he contrived to get them
all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories. I did not wait to be
ordered back to mine, but retreated unnoticed, as unnoticed I had left it.

Not, however, to go to bed: on the contrary, I began and dressed myself
carefully. The sounds I had heard after the scream, and the words that had been
uttered, had probably been heard only by me; for they had proceeded from the
room above mine: but they assured me that it was not a servant’s dream which
had thus struck horror through the house; and that the explanation Mr.
Rochester had given was merely an invention framed to pacify his guests. I
dressed, then, to be ready for emergencies. When dressed, I sat a long time by
the window looking out over the silent grounds and silvered fields and waiting
for I knew not what. It seemed to me that some event must follow the strange
cry, struggle, and call.

No: stillness returned: each murmur and movement ceased gradually, and in about
an hour Thornfield Hall was again as hushed as a desert. It seemed that sleep
and night had resumed their empire. Meantime the moon declined: she was about
to set. Not liking to sit in the cold and darkness, I thought I would lie down
on my bed, dressed as I was. I left the window, and moved with little noise
across the carpet; as I stooped to take off my shoes, a cautious hand tapped
low at the door.

“Am I wanted?” I asked.

“Are you up?” asked the voice I expected to hear, viz., my master’s.

“Yes, sir.”

“And dressed?”

“Yes.”

“Come out, then, quietly.”

I obeyed. Mr. Rochester stood in the gallery holding a light.

“I want you,” he said: “come this way: take your time, and make no noise.”

My slippers were thin: I could walk the matted floor as softly as a cat. He
glided up the gallery and up the stairs, and stopped in the dark, low corridor
of the fateful third storey: I had followed and stood at his side.

“Have you a sponge in your room?” he asked in a whisper.

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you any salts—volatile salts?”

“Yes.”

“Go back and fetch both.”

I returned, sought the sponge on the washstand, the salts in my drawer, and
once more retraced my steps. He still waited; he held a key in his hand:
approaching one of the small, black doors, he put it in the lock; he paused,
and addressed me again.

“You don’t turn sick at the sight of blood?”

“I think I shall not: I have never been tried yet.”

I felt a thrill while I answered him; but no coldness, and no faintness.

“Just give me your hand,” he said: “it will not do to risk a fainting fit.”

I put my fingers into his. “Warm and steady,” was his remark: he turned the key
and opened the door.

I saw a room I remembered to have seen before, the day Mrs. Fairfax showed me
over the house: it was hung with tapestry; but the tapestry was now looped up
in one part, and there was a door apparent, which had then been concealed. This
door was open; a light shone out of the room within: I heard thence a snarling,
snatching sound, almost like a dog quarrelling. Mr. Rochester, putting down his
candle, said to me, “Wait a minute,” and he went forward to the inner
apartment. A shout of laughter greeted his entrance; noisy at first, and
terminating in Grace Poole’s own goblin ha! ha! She then was there. He
made some sort of arrangement without speaking, though I heard a low voice
address him: he came out and closed the door behind him.
She
“Here, Jane!” he said; and I walked round to the other side of a large bed,
which with its drawn curtains concealed a considerable portion of the chamber.
An easy-chair was near the bed-head: a man sat in it, dressed with the
exception of his coat; he was still; his head leant back; his eyes were closed.
Mr. Rochester held the candle over him; I recognised in his pale and seemingly
lifeless face—the stranger, Mason: I saw too that his linen on one side, and
one arm, was almost soaked in blood.

“Hold the candle,” said Mr. Rochester, and I took it: he fetched a basin of
water from the washstand: “Hold that,” said he. I obeyed. He took the sponge,
dipped it in, and moistened the corpse-like face; he asked for my
smelling-bottle, and applied it to the nostrils. Mr. Mason shortly unclosed his
eyes; he groaned. Mr. Rochester opened the shirt of the wounded man, whose arm
and shoulder were bandaged: he sponged away blood, trickling fast down.

“Is there immediate danger?” murmured Mr. Mason.

“Pooh! No—a mere scratch. Don’t be so overcome, man: bear up! I’ll fetch a
surgeon for you now, myself: you’ll be able to be removed by morning, I hope.
Jane,” he continued.

“Sir?”

“I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman, for an hour, or
perhaps two hours: you will sponge the blood as I do when it returns: if he
feels faint, you will put the glass of water on that stand to his lips, and
your salts to his nose. You will not speak to him on any pretext—and—Richard,
it will be at the peril of your life if you speak to her: open your
lips—agitate yourself—and I’ll not answer for the consequences.”

Again the poor man groaned; he looked as if he dared not move; fear, either of
death or of something else, appeared almost to paralyse him. Mr. Rochester put
the now bloody sponge into my hand, and I proceeded to use it as he had done.
He watched me a second, then saying, “Remember!—No conversation,” he left the
room. I experienced a strange feeling as the key grated in the lock, and the
sound of his retreating step ceased to be heard.

Here then I was in the third storey, fastened into one of its mystic cells;
night around me; a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes and hands; a
murderess hardly separated from me by a single door: yes—that was appalling—the
rest I could bear; but I shuddered at the thought of Grace Poole bursting out
upon me.

I must keep to my post, however. I must watch this ghastly countenance—these
blue, still lips forbidden to unclose—these eyes now shut, now opening, now
wandering through the room, now fixing on me, and ever glazed with the dulness
of horror. I must dip my hand again and again in the basin of blood and water,
and wipe away the trickling gore. I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle
wane on my employment; the shadows darken on the wrought, antique tapestry
round me, and grow black under the hangings of the vast old bed, and quiver
strangely over the doors of a great cabinet opposite—whose front, divided into
twelve panels, bore, in grim design, the heads of the twelve apostles, each
enclosed in its separate panel as in a frame; while above them at the top rose
an ebon crucifix and a dying Christ.

According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered here or
glanced there, it was now the bearded physician, Luke, that bent his brow; now
St. John’s long hair that waved; and anon the devilish face of Judas, that grew
out of the panel, and seemed gathering life and threatening a revelation of the
arch-traitor—of Satan himself—in his subordinate’s form.

Amidst all this, I had to listen as well as watch: to listen for the movements
of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den. But since Mr. Rochester’s
visit it seemed spellbound: all the night I heard but three sounds at three
long intervals,—a step creak, a momentary renewal of the snarling, canine
noise, and a deep human groan.

Then my own thoughts worried me. What crime was this, that lived incarnate in
this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the
owner?—what mystery, that broke out now in fire and now in blood, at the
deadest hours of night? What creature was it, that, masked in an ordinary
woman’s face and shape, uttered the voice, now of a mocking demon, and anon of
a carrion-seeking bird of prey?

And this man I bent over—this commonplace, quiet stranger—how had he become
involved in the web of horror? and why had the Fury flown at him? What made him
seek this quarter of the house at an untimely season, when he should have been
asleep in bed? I had heard Mr. Rochester assign him an apartment below—what
brought him here! And why, now, was he so tame under the violence or treachery
done him? Why did he so quietly submit to the concealment Mr. Rochester
enforced? Why did Mr. Rochester enforce this concealment? His guest had
been outraged, his own life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted
against; and both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion!
Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous
will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few
words which had passed between them assured me of this. It was evident that in
their former intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been
habitually influenced by the active energy of the other: whence then had arisen
Mr. Rochester’s dismay when he heard of Mr. Mason’s arrival? Why had the mere
name of this unresisting individual—whom his word now sufficed to control like
a child—fallen on him, a few hours since, as a thunderbolt might fall on an
oak?
did
Oh! I could not forget his look and his paleness when he whispered: “Jane, I
have got a blow—I have got a blow, Jane.” I could not forget how the arm had
trembled which he rested on my shoulder: and it was no light matter which could
thus bow the resolute spirit and thrill the vigorous frame of Fairfax
Rochester.

“When will he come? When will he come?” I cried inwardly, as the night lingered
and lingered—as my bleeding patient drooped, moaned, sickened: and neither day
nor aid arrived. I had, again and again, held the water to Mason’s white lips;
again and again offered him the stimulating salts: my efforts seemed
ineffectual: either bodily or mental suffering, or loss of blood, or all three
combined, were fast prostrating his strength. He moaned so, and looked so weak,
wild, and lost, I feared he was dying; and I might not even speak to him.

The candle, wasted at last, went out; as it expired, I perceived streaks of
grey light edging the window curtains: dawn was then approaching. Presently I
heard Pilot bark far below, out of his distant kennel in the courtyard: hope
revived. Nor was it unwarranted: in five minutes more the grating key, the
yielding lock, warned me my watch was relieved. It could not have lasted more
than two hours: many a week has seemed shorter.

Mr. Rochester entered, and with him the surgeon he had been to fetch.

“Now, Carter, be on the alert,” he said to this last: “I give you but
half-an-hour for dressing the wound, fastening the bandages, getting the
patient downstairs and all.”

“But is he fit to move, sir?”

“No doubt of it; it is nothing serious; he is nervous, his spirits must be kept
up. Come, set to work.”

Mr. Rochester drew back the thick curtain, drew up the holland blind, let in
all the daylight he could; and I was surprised and cheered to see how far dawn
was advanced: what rosy streaks were beginning to brighten the east. Then he
approached Mason, whom the surgeon was already handling.

“Now, my good fellow, how are you?” he asked.

“She’s done for me, I fear,” was the faint reply.

“Not a whit!—courage! This day fortnight you’ll hardly be a pin the worse of
it: you’ve lost a little blood; that’s all. Carter, assure him there’s no
danger.”

“I can do that conscientiously,” said Carter, who had now undone the bandages;
“only I wish I could have got here sooner: he would not have bled so much—but
how is this? The flesh on the shoulder is torn as well as cut. This wound was
not done with a knife: there have been teeth here!”

“She bit me,” he murmured. “She worried me like a tigress, when Rochester got
the knife from her.”

“You should not have yielded: you should have grappled with her at once,” said
Mr. Rochester.

“But under such circumstances, what could one do?” returned Mason. “Oh, it was
frightful!” he added, shuddering. “And I did not expect it: she looked so quiet
at first.”

“I warned you,” was his friend’s answer; “I said—be on your guard when you go
near her. Besides, you might have waited till to-morrow, and had me with you:
it was mere folly to attempt the interview to-night, and alone.”

“I thought I could have done some good.”

“You thought! you thought! Yes, it makes me impatient to hear you: but,
however, you have suffered, and are likely to suffer enough for not taking my
advice; so I’ll say no more. Carter—hurry!—hurry! The sun will soon rise, and I
must have him off.”

“Directly, sir; the shoulder is just bandaged. I must look to this other wound
in the arm: she has had her teeth here too, I think.”

“She sucked the blood: she said she’d drain my heart,” said Mason.

I saw Mr. Rochester shudder: a singularly marked expression of disgust, horror,
hatred, warped his countenance almost to distortion; but he only said—

“Come, be silent, Richard, and never mind her gibberish: don’t repeat it.”

“I wish I could forget it,” was the answer.

“You will when you are out of the country: when you get back to Spanish Town,
you may think of her as dead and buried—or rather, you need not think of her at
all.”

“Impossible to forget this night!”

“It is not impossible: have some energy, man. You thought you were as dead as a
herring two hours since, and you are all alive and talking now. There!—Carter
has done with you or nearly so; I’ll make you decent in a trice. Jane” (he
turned to me for the first time since his re-entrance), “take this key: go down
into my bedroom, and walk straight forward into my dressing-room: open the top
drawer of the wardrobe and take out a clean shirt and neck-handkerchief: bring
them here; and be nimble.”

I went; sought the repository he had mentioned, found the articles named, and
returned with them.

“Now,” said he, “go to the other side of the bed while I order his toilet; but
don’t leave the room: you may be wanted again.”

I retired as directed.

“Was anybody stirring below when you went down, Jane?” inquired Mr. Rochester
presently.

“No, sir; all was very still.”

“We shall get you off cannily, Dick: and it will be better, both for your sake,
and for that of the poor creature in yonder. I have striven long to avoid
exposure, and I should not like it to come at last. Here, Carter, help him on
with his waist-coat. Where did you leave your furred cloak? You can’t travel a
mile without that, I know, in this damned cold climate. In your room?—Jane, run
down to Mr. Mason’s room,—the one next mine,—and fetch a cloak you will see
there.”

Again I ran, and again returned, bearing an immense mantle lined and edged with
fur.

“Now, I’ve another errand for you,” said my untiring master; “you must away to
my room again. What a mercy you are shod with velvet, Jane!—a clod-hopping
messenger would never do at this juncture. You must open the middle drawer of
my toilet-table and take out a little phial and a little glass you will find
there,—quick!”

I flew thither and back, bringing the desired vessels.

“That’s well! Now, doctor, I shall take the liberty of administering a dose
myself, on my own responsibility. I got this cordial at Rome, of an Italian
charlatan—a fellow you would have kicked, Carter. It is not a thing to be used
indiscriminately, but it is good upon occasion: as now, for instance. Jane, a
little water.”

He held out the tiny glass, and I half filled it from the water-bottle on the
washstand.

“That will do;—now wet the lip of the phial.”

I did so; he measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid, and presented it to
Mason.

“Drink, Richard: it will give you the heart you lack, for an hour or so.”

“But will it hurt me?—is it inflammatory?”

“Drink! drink! drink!”

Mr. Mason obeyed, because it was evidently useless to resist. He was dressed
now: he still looked pale, but he was no longer gory and sullied. Mr. Rochester
let him sit three minutes after he had swallowed the liquid; he then took his
arm—

“Now I am sure you can get on your feet,” he said—“try.”

The patient rose.

“Carter, take him under the other shoulder. Be of good cheer, Richard; step
out—that’s it!”

“I do feel better,” remarked Mr. Mason.

“I am sure you do. Now, Jane, trip on before us away to the backstairs; unbolt
the side-passage door, and tell the driver of the post-chaise you will see in
the yard—or just outside, for I told him not to drive his rattling wheels over
the pavement—to be ready; we are coming: and, Jane, if any one is about, come
to the foot of the stairs and hem.”

It was by this time half-past five, and the sun was on the point of rising; but
I found the kitchen still dark and silent. The side-passage door was fastened;
I opened it with as little noise as possible: all the yard was quiet; but the
gates stood wide open, and there was a post-chaise, with horses ready
harnessed, and driver seated on the box, stationed outside. I approached him,
and said the gentlemen were coming; he nodded: then I looked carefully round
and listened. The stillness of early morning slumbered everywhere; the curtains
were yet drawn over the servants’ chamber windows; little birds were just
twittering in the blossom-blanched orchard trees, whose boughs drooped like
white garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard; the carriage
horses stamped from time to time in their closed stables: all else was still.

The gentlemen now appeared. Mason, supported by Mr. Rochester and the surgeon,
seemed to walk with tolerable ease: they assisted him into the chaise; Carter
followed.

“Take care of him,” said Mr. Rochester to the latter, “and keep him at your
house till he is quite well: I shall ride over in a day or two to see how he
gets on. Richard, how is it with you?”

“The fresh air revives me, Fairfax.”

“Leave the window open on his side, Carter; there is no wind—good-bye, Dick.”

“Fairfax—”

“Well what is it?”

“Let her be taken care of; let her be treated as tenderly as may be: let her—”
he stopped and burst into tears.

“I do my best; and have done it, and will do it,” was the answer: he shut up
the chaise door, and the vehicle drove away.

“Yet would to God there was an end of all this!” added Mr. Rochester, as he
closed and barred the heavy yard-gates.

This done, he moved with slow step and abstracted air towards a door in the
wall bordering the orchard. I, supposing he had done with me, prepared to
return to the house; again, however, I heard him call “Jane!” He had opened the
portal and stood at it, waiting for me.

“Come where there is some freshness, for a few moments,” he said; “that house
is a mere dungeon: don’t you feel it so?”

“It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir.”

“The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes,” he answered; “and you see it
through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the
silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods
mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now here” (he pointed to the leafy
enclosure we had entered) “all is real, sweet, and pure.”
here
He strayed down a walk edged with box, with apple trees, pear trees, and cherry
trees on one side, and a border on the other full of all sorts of old-fashioned
flowers, stocks, sweet-williams, primroses, pansies, mingled with southernwood,
sweet-briar, and various fragrant herbs. They were fresh now as a succession of
April showers and gleams, followed by a lovely spring morning, could make them:
the sun was just entering the dappled east, and his light illumined the
wreathed and dewy orchard trees and shone down the quiet walks under them.

“Jane, will you have a flower?”

He gathered a half-blown rose, the first on the bush, and offered it to me.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Do you like this sunrise, Jane? That sky with its high and light clouds which
are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm—this placid and balmly atmosphere?”

“I do, very much.”

“You have passed a strange night, Jane.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And it has made you look pale—were you afraid when I left you alone with
Mason?”

“I was afraid of some one coming out of the inner room.”

“But I had fastened the door—I had the key in my pocket: I should have been a
careless shepherd if I had left a lamb—my pet lamb—so near a wolf’s den,
unguarded: you were safe.”

“Will Grace Poole live here still, sir?”

“Oh yes! don’t trouble your head about her—put the thing out of your thoughts.”

“Yet it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays.”

“Never fear—I will take care of myself.”

“Is the danger you apprehended last night gone by now, sir?”

“I cannot vouch for that till Mason is out of England: nor even then. To live,
for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spue fire any
day.”

“But Mr. Mason seems a man easily led. Your influence, sir, is evidently potent
with him: he will never set you at defiance or wilfully injure you.”

“Oh, no! Mason will not defy me; nor, knowing it, will he hurt me—but,
unintentionally, he might in a moment, by one careless word, deprive me, if not
of life, yet for ever of happiness.”

“Tell him to be cautious, sir: let him know what you fear, and show him how to
avert the danger.”

He laughed sardonically, hastily took my hand, and as hastily threw it from
him.

“If I could do that, simpleton, where would the danger be? Annihilated in a
moment. Ever since I have known Mason, I have only had to say to him ‘Do that,’
and the thing has been done. But I cannot give him orders in this case: I
cannot say ‘Beware of harming me, Richard;’ for it is imperative that I should
keep him ignorant that harm to me is possible. Now you look puzzled; and I will
puzzle you further. You are my little friend, are you not?”

“I like to serve you, sir, and to obey you in all that is right.”

“Precisely: I see you do. I see genuine contentment in your gait and mien, your
eye and face, when you are helping me and pleasing me—working for me, and with
me, in, as you characteristically say, ‘all that is right:’ for if I bid
you do what you thought wrong, there would be no light-footed running, no
neat-handed alacrity, no lively glance and animated complexion. My friend would
then turn to me, quiet and pale, and would say, ‘No, sir; that is impossible: I
cannot do it, because it is wrong;’ and would become immutable as a fixed star.
Well, you too have power over me, and may injure me: yet I dare not show you
where I am vulnerable, lest, faithful and friendly as you are, you should
transfix me at once.”
all that is right
“If you have no more to fear from Mr. Mason than you have from me, sir, you are
very safe.”

“God grant it may be so! Here, Jane, is an arbour; sit down.”

The arbour was an arch in the wall, lined with ivy; it contained a rustic seat.
Mr. Rochester took it, leaving room, however, for me: but I stood before him.

“Sit,” he said; “the bench is long enough for two. You don’t hesitate to take a
place at my side, do you? Is that wrong, Jane?”

I answered him by assuming it: to refuse would, I felt, have been unwise.

“Now, my little friend, while the sun drinks the dew—while all the flowers in
this old garden awake and expand, and the birds fetch their young ones’
breakfast out of the Thornfield, and the early bees do their first spell of
work—I’ll put a case to you, which you must endeavour to suppose your own: but
first, look at me, and tell me you are at ease, and not fearing that I err in
detaining you, or that you err in staying.”

“No, sir; I am content.”

“Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy:—suppose you were no longer a girl
well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from childhood upwards;
imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive that you there commit a
capital error, no matter of what nature or from what motives, but one whose
consequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence. Mind, I
don’t say a crime; I am not speaking of shedding of blood or any other
guilty act, which might make the perpetrator amenable to the law: my word is
error. The results of what you have done become in time to you utterly
insupportable; you take measures to obtain relief: unusual measures, but
neither unlawful nor culpable. Still you are miserable; for hope has quitted
you on the very confines of life: your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which
you feel will not leave it till the time of setting. Bitter and base
associations have become the sole food of your memory: you wander here and
there, seeking rest in exile: happiness in pleasure—I mean in heartless,
sensual pleasure—such as dulls intellect and blights feeling. Heart-weary and
soul-withered, you come home after years of voluntary banishment: you make a
new acquaintance—how or where no matter: you find in this stranger much of the
good and bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never
before encountered; and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without
taint. Such society revives, regenerates: you feel better days come back—higher
wishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence your life, and to spend what
remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain
this end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom—a mere
conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies nor your
judgment approves?”
crimeerror
He paused for an answer: and what was I to say? Oh, for some good spirit to
suggest a judicious and satisfactory response! Vain aspiration! The west wind
whispered in the ivy round me; but no gentle Ariel borrowed its breath as a
medium of speech: the birds sang in the tree-tops; but their song, however
sweet, was inarticulate.

Again Mr. Rochester propounded his query:

“Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant, man justified
in daring the world’s opinion, in order to attach to him for ever this gentle,
gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his own peace of mind and
regeneration of life?”

“Sir,” I answered, “a wanderer’s repose or a sinner’s reformation should never
depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die; philosophers falter in wisdom,
and Christians in goodness: if any one you know has suffered and erred, let him
look higher than his equals for strength to amend and solace to heal.”

“But the instrument—the instrument! God, who does the work, ordains the
instrument. I have myself—I tell it you without parable—been a worldly,
dissipated, restless man; and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure
in—”

He paused: the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling. I almost
wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to catch the suspended
revelation; but they would have had to wait many minutes—so long was the
silence protracted. At last I looked up at the tardy speaker: he was looking
eagerly at me.

“Little friend,” said he, in quite a changed tone—while his face changed too,
losing all its softness and gravity, and becoming harsh and sarcastic—“you have
noticed my tender penchant for Miss Ingram: don’t you think if I married her
she would regenerate me with a vengeance?”

He got up instantly, went quite to the other end of the walk, and when he came
back he was humming a tune.

“Jane, Jane,” said he, stopping before me, “you are quite pale with your
vigils: don’t you curse me for disturbing your rest?”

“Curse you? No, sir.”

“Shake hands in confirmation of the word. What cold fingers! They were warmer
last night when I touched them at the door of the mysterious chamber. Jane,
when will you watch with me again?”

“Whenever I can be useful, sir.”

“For instance, the night before I am married! I am sure I shall not be able to
sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me company? To you I can talk
of my lovely one: for now you have seen her and know her.”

“Yes, sir.”

“She’s a rare one, is she not, Jane?”

“Yes, sir.”

“A strapper—a real strapper, Jane: big, brown, and buxom; with hair just such
as the ladies of Carthage must have had. Bless me! there’s Dent and Lynn in the
stables! Go in by the shrubbery, through that wicket.”

As I went one way, he went another, and I heard him in the yard, saying
cheerfully—

“Mason got the start of you all this morning; he was gone before sunrise: I
rose at four to see him off.”

CHAPTER XXI

Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and
the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the
key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange
ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between
far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding
their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin)
whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may
be but the sympathies of Nature with man.

When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie Leaven
say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little child; and that
to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to one’s self or one’s
kin. The saying might have worn out of my memory, had not a circumstance
immediately followed which served indelibly to fix it there. The next day
Bessie was sent for home to the deathbed of her little sister.

Of late I had often recalled this saying and this incident; for during the past
week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not brought with it a
dream of an infant, which I sometimes hushed in my arms, sometimes dandled on
my knee, sometimes watched playing with daisies on a lawn, or again, dabbling
its hands in running water. It was a wailing child this night, and a laughing
one the next: now it nestled close to me, and now it ran from me; but whatever
mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven
successive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber.

I did not like this iteration of one idea—this strange recurrence of one image,
and I grew nervous as bedtime approached and the hour of the vision drew near.
It was from companionship with this baby-phantom I had been roused on that
moonlight night when I heard the cry; and it was on the afternoon of the day
following I was summoned downstairs by a message that some one wanted me in
Mrs. Fairfax’s room. On repairing thither, I found a man waiting for me, having
the appearance of a gentleman’s servant: he was dressed in deep mourning, and
the hat he held in his hand was surrounded with a crape band.

“I daresay you hardly remember me, Miss,” he said, rising as I entered; “but my
name is Leaven: I lived coachman with Mrs. Reed when you were at Gateshead,
eight or nine years since, and I live there still.”

“Oh, Robert! how do you do? I remember you very well: you used to give me a
ride sometimes on Miss Georgiana’s bay pony. And how is Bessie? You are married
to Bessie?”

“Yes, Miss: my wife is very hearty, thank you; she brought me another little
one about two months since—we have three now—and both mother and child are
thriving.”

“And are the family well at the house, Robert?”

“I am sorry I can’t give you better news of them, Miss: they are very badly at
present—in great trouble.”

“I hope no one is dead,” I said, glancing at his black dress. He too looked
down at the crape round his hat and replied—

“Mr. John died yesterday was a week, at his chambers in London.”

“Mr. John?”

“Yes.”

“And how does his mother bear it?”

“Why, you see, Miss Eyre, it is not a common mishap: his life has been very
wild: these last three years he gave himself up to strange ways, and his death
was shocking.”

“I heard from Bessie he was not doing well.”

“Doing well! He could not do worse: he ruined his health and his estate amongst
the worst men and the worst women. He got into debt and into jail: his mother
helped him out twice, but as soon as he was free he returned to his old
companions and habits. His head was not strong: the knaves he lived amongst
fooled him beyond anything I ever heard. He came down to Gateshead about three
weeks ago and wanted missis to give up all to him. Missis refused: her means
have long been much reduced by his extravagance; so he went back again, and the
next news was that he was dead. How he died, God knows!—they say he killed
himself.”

I was silent: the tidings were frightful. Robert Leaven resumed—

“Missis had been out of health herself for some time: she had got very stout,
but was not strong with it; and the loss of money and fear of poverty were
quite breaking her down. The information about Mr. John’s death and the manner
of it came too suddenly: it brought on a stroke. She was three days without
speaking; but last Tuesday she seemed rather better: she appeared as if she
wanted to say something, and kept making signs to my wife and mumbling. It was
only yesterday morning, however, that Bessie understood she was pronouncing
your name; and at last she made out the words, ‘Bring Jane—fetch Jane Eyre: I
want to speak to her.’ Bessie is not sure whether she is in her right mind, or
means anything by the words; but she told Miss Reed and Miss Georgiana, and
advised them to send for you. The young ladies put it off at first; but their
mother grew so restless, and said, ‘Jane, Jane,’ so many times, that at last
they consented. I left Gateshead yesterday: and if you can get ready, Miss, I
should like to take you back with me early to-morrow morning.”

“Yes, Robert, I shall be ready: it seems to me that I ought to go.”

“I think so too, Miss. Bessie said she was sure you would not refuse: but I
suppose you will have to ask leave before you can get off?”

“Yes; and I will do it now;” and having directed him to the servants’ hall, and
recommended him to the care of John’s wife, and the attentions of John himself,
I went in search of Mr. Rochester.

He was not in any of the lower rooms; he was not in the yard, the stables, or
the grounds. I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had seen him;—yes: she believed he was
playing billiards with Miss Ingram. To the billiard-room I hastened: the click
of balls and the hum of voices resounded thence; Mr. Rochester, Miss Ingram,
the two Misses Eshton, and their admirers, were all busied in the game. It
required some courage to disturb so interesting a party; my errand, however,
was one I could not defer, so I approached the master where he stood at Miss
Ingram’s side. She turned as I drew near, and looked at me haughtily: her eyes
seemed to demand, “What can the creeping creature want now?” and when I said,
in a low voice, “Mr. Rochester,” she made a movement as if tempted to order me
away. I remember her appearance at the moment—it was very graceful and very
striking: she wore a morning robe of sky-blue crape; a gauzy azure scarf was
twisted in her hair. She had been all animation with the game, and irritated
pride did not lower the expression of her haughty lineaments.

“Does that person want you?” she inquired of Mr. Rochester; and Mr. Rochester
turned to see who the “person” was. He made a curious grimace—one of his
strange and equivocal demonstrations—threw down his cue and followed me from
the room.

“Well, Jane?” he said, as he rested his back against the schoolroom door, which
he had shut.

“If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two.”

“What to do?—where to go?”

“To see a sick lady who has sent for me.”

“What sick lady?—where does she live?”

“At Gateshead; in ——shire.”

“-shire? That is a hundred miles off! Who may she be that sends for people to
see her that distance?”

“Her name is Reed, sir—Mrs. Reed.”

“Reed of Gateshead? There was a Reed of Gateshead, a magistrate.”

“It is his widow, sir.”

“And what have you to do with her? How do you know her?”

“Mr. Reed was my uncle—my mother’s brother.”

“The deuce he was! You never told me that before: you always said you had no
relations.”

“None that would own me, sir. Mr. Reed is dead, and his wife cast me off.”

“Why?”

“Because I was poor, and burdensome, and she disliked me.”

“But Reed left children?—you must have cousins? Sir George Lynn was talking of
a Reed of Gateshead yesterday, who, he said, was one of the veriest rascals on
town; and Ingram was mentioning a Georgiana Reed of the same place, who was
much admired for her beauty a season or two ago in London.”

“John Reed is dead, too, sir: he ruined himself and half-ruined his family, and
is supposed to have committed suicide. The news so shocked his mother that it
brought on an apoplectic attack.”

“And what good can you do her? Nonsense, Jane! I would never think of running a
hundred miles to see an old lady who will, perhaps, be dead before you reach
her: besides, you say she cast you off.”

“Yes, sir, but that is long ago; and when her circumstances were very
different: I could not be easy to neglect her wishes now.”

“How long will you stay?”

“As short a time as possible, sir.”

“Promise me only to stay a week—”

“I had better not pass my word: I might be obliged to break it.”

“At all events you will come back: you will not be induced under any
pretext to take up a permanent residence with her?”

“Oh, no! I shall certainly return if all be well.”

“And who goes with you? You don’t travel a hundred miles alone.”

“No, sir, she has sent her coachman.”

“A person to be trusted?”

“Yes, sir, he has lived ten years in the family.”

Mr. Rochester meditated. “When do you wish to go?”

“Early to-morrow morning, sir.”

“Well, you must have some money; you can’t travel without money, and I daresay
you have not much: I have given you no salary yet. How much have you in the
world, Jane?” he asked, smiling.

I drew out my purse; a meagre thing it was. “Five shillings, sir.” He took the
purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as if its
scantiness amused him. Soon he produced his pocket-book: “Here,” said he,
offering me a note; it was fifty pounds, and he owed me but fifteen. I told him
I had no change.

“I don’t want change; you know that. Take your wages.”

I declined accepting more than was my due. He scowled at first; then, as if
recollecting something, he said—

“Right, right! Better not give you all now: you would, perhaps, stay away three
months if you had fifty pounds. There are ten; is it not plenty?”

“Yes, sir, but now you owe me five.”

“Come back for it, then; I am your banker for forty pounds.”

“Mr. Rochester, I may as well mention another matter of business to you while I
have the opportunity.”

“Matter of business? I am curious to hear it.”

“You have as good as informed me, sir, that you are going shortly to be
married?”

“Yes; what then?”

“In that case, sir, Adèle ought to go to school: I am sure you will perceive
the necessity of it.”

“To get her out of my bride’s way, who might otherwise walk over her rather too
emphatically? There’s sense in the suggestion; not a doubt of it. Adèle, as you
say, must go to school; and you, of course, must march straight to—the devil?”

“I hope not, sir; but I must seek another situation somewhere.”

“In course!” he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion of features
equally fantastic and ludicrous. He looked at me some minutes.

“And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited by you to
seek a place, I suppose?”

“No, sir; I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify me in
asking favours of them—but I shall advertise.”

“You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!” he growled. “At your peril you
advertise! I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds.
Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.”

“And so have I, sir,” I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me. “I
could not spare the money on any account.”

“Little niggard!” said he, “refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me five
pounds, Jane.”

“Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.”

“Just let me look at the cash.”

“No, sir; you are not to be trusted.”

“Jane!”

“Sir?”

“Promise me one thing.”

“I’ll promise you anything, sir, that I think I am likely to perform.”

“Not to advertise: and to trust this quest of a situation to me. I’ll find you
one in time.”

“I shall be glad so to do, sir, if you, in your turn, will promise that I and
Adèle shall be both safe out of the house before your bride enters it.”

“Very well! very well! I’ll pledge my word on it. You go to-morrow, then?”

“Yes, sir; early.”

“Shall you come down to the drawing-room after dinner?”

“No, sir, I must prepare for the journey.”

“Then you and I must bid good-bye for a little while?”

“I suppose so, sir.”

“And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me; I’m not
quite up to it.”

“They say, Farewell, or any other form they prefer.”

“Then say it.”

“Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the present.”

“What must I say?”

“The same, if you like, sir.”

“Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present; is that all?”

“Yes.”

“It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should like
something else: a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands, for
instance; but no—that would not content me either. So you’ll do no more than
say Farewell, Jane?”

“It is enough, sir: as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in
many.”

“Very likely; but it is blank and cool—‘Farewell.’”

“How long is he going to stand with his back against that door?” I asked
myself; “I want to commence my packing.” The dinner-bell rang, and suddenly
away he bolted, without another syllable: I saw him no more during the day, and
was off before he had risen in the morning.

I reached the lodge at Gateshead about five o’clock in the afternoon of the
first of May: I stepped in there before going up to the hall. It was very clean
and neat: the ornamental windows were hung with little white curtains; the
floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were burnished bright, and the
fire burnt clear. Bessie sat on the hearth, nursing her last-born, and Robert
and his sister played quietly in a corner.

“Bless you!—I knew you would come!” exclaimed Mrs. Leaven, as I entered.

“Yes, Bessie,” said I, after I had kissed her; “and I trust I am not too late.
How is Mrs. Reed?—Alive still, I hope.”

“Yes, she is alive; and more sensible and collected than she was. The doctor
says she may linger a week or two yet; but he hardly thinks she will finally
recover.”

“Has she mentioned me lately?”

“She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would come, but she
is sleeping now, or was ten minutes ago, when I was up at the house. She
generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon, and wakes up about six
or seven. Will you rest yourself here an hour, Miss, and then I will go up with
you?”

Robert here entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the cradle and went
to welcome him: afterwards she insisted on my taking off my bonnet and having
some tea; for she said I looked pale and tired. I was glad to accept her
hospitality; and I submitted to be relieved of my travelling garb just as
passively as I used to let her undress me when a child.

Old times crowded fast back on me as I watched her bustling about—setting out
the tea-tray with her best china, cutting bread and butter, toasting a
tea-cake, and, between whiles, giving little Robert or Jane an occasional tap
or push, just as she used to give me in former days. Bessie had retained her
quick temper as well as her light foot and good looks.

Tea ready, I was going to approach the table; but she desired me to sit still,
quite in her old peremptory tones. I must be served at the fireside, she said;
and she placed before me a little round stand with my cup and a plate of toast,
absolutely as she used to accommodate me with some privately purloined dainty
on a nursery chair: and I smiled and obeyed her as in bygone days.

She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort of a person
the mistress was; and when I told her there was only a master, whether he was a
nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I told her he was rather an ugly man, but
quite a gentleman; and that he treated me kindly, and I was content. Then I
went on to describe to her the gay company that had lately been staying at the
house; and to these details Bessie listened with interest: they were precisely
of the kind she relished.

In such conversation an hour was soon gone: Bessie restored to me my bonnet,
&c., and, accompanied by her, I quitted the lodge for the hall. It was also
accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years ago, walked down the path I
was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw morning in January, I had left a
hostile roof with a desperate and embittered heart—a sense of outlawry and
almost of reprobation—to seek the chilly harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so
far away and unexplored. The same hostile roof now again rose before me: my
prospects were doubtful yet; and I had yet an aching heart. I still felt as a
wanderer on the face of the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and
my own powers, and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my
wrongs, too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished.

“You shall go into the breakfast-room first,” said Bessie, as she preceded me
through the hall; “the young ladies will be there.”

In another moment I was within that apartment. There was every article of
furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first introduced to Mr.
Brocklehurst: the very rug he had stood upon still covered the hearth. Glancing
at the bookcases, I thought I could distinguish the two volumes of Bewick’s
British Birds occupying their old place on the third shelf, and Gulliver’s
Travels and the Arabian Nights ranged just above. The inanimate objects were
not changed; but the living things had altered past recognition.

Two young ladies appeared before me; one very tall, almost as tall as Miss
Ingram—very thin too, with a sallow face and severe mien. There was something
ascetic in her look, which was augmented by the extreme plainness of a
straight-skirted, black, stuff dress, a starched linen collar, hair combed away
from the temples, and the nun-like ornament of a string of ebony beads and a
crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza, though I could trace little resemblance
to her former self in that elongated and colourless visage.

The other was as certainly Georgiana: but not the Georgiana I remembered—the
slim and fairy-like girl of eleven. This was a full-blown, very plump damsel,
fair as waxwork, with handsome and regular features, languishing blue eyes, and
ringleted yellow hair. The hue of her dress was black too; but its fashion was
so different from her sister’s—so much more flowing and becoming—it looked as
stylish as the other’s looked puritanical.

In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother—and only one; the thin
and pallid elder daughter had her parent’s Cairngorm eye: the blooming and
luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and chin—perhaps a little
softened, but still imparting an indescribable hardness to the countenance
otherwise so voluptuous and buxom.

Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed me by the
name of “Miss Eyre.” Eliza’s greeting was delivered in a short, abrupt voice,
without a smile; and then she sat down again, fixed her eyes on the fire, and
seemed to forget me. Georgiana added to her “How d’ye do?” several commonplaces
about my journey, the weather, and so on, uttered in rather a drawling tone:
and accompanied by sundry side-glances that measured me from head to foot—now
traversing the folds of my drab merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain
trimming of my cottage bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting
you know that they think you a “quiz” without actually saying the words. A
certain superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone,
express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by any
positive rudeness in word or deed.

A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power over me
it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised to find how
easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi-sarcastic
attentions of the other—Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana ruffle me. The
fact was, I had other things to think about; within the last few months
feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than any they could
raise—pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite had been excited
than any it was in their power to inflict or bestow—that their airs gave me no
concern either for good or bad.

“How is Mrs. Reed?” I asked soon, looking calmly at Georgiana, who thought fit
to bridle at the direct address, as if it were an unexpected liberty.

“Mrs. Reed? Ah! mama, you mean; she is extremely poorly: I doubt if you can see
her to-night.”

“If,” said I, “you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come, I should be
much obliged to you.”

Georgiana almost started, and she opened her blue eyes wild and wide. “I know
she had a particular wish to see me,” I added, “and I would not defer attending
to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary.”

“Mama dislikes being disturbed in an evening,” remarked Eliza. I soon rose,
quietly took off my bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and said I would just step
out to Bessie—who was, I dared say, in the kitchen—and ask her to ascertain
whether Mrs. Reed was disposed to receive me or not to-night. I went, and
having found Bessie and despatched her on my errand, I proceeded to take
further measures. It had heretofore been my habit always to shrink from
arrogance: received as I had been to-day, I should, a year ago, have resolved
to quit Gateshead the very next morning; now, it was disclosed to me all at
once that that would be a foolish plan. I had taken a journey of a hundred
miles to see my aunt, and I must stay with her till she was better—or dead: as
to her daughters’ pride or folly, I must put it on one side, make myself
independent of it. So I addressed the housekeeper; asked her to show me a room,
told her I should probably be a visitor here for a week or two, had my trunk
conveyed to my chamber, and followed it thither myself: I met Bessie on the
landing.

“Missis is awake,” said she; “I have told her you are here: come and let us see
if she will know you.”

I did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so often
been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days. I hastened before
Bessie; I softly opened the door: a shaded light stood on the table, for it was
now getting dark. There was the great four-post bed with amber hangings as of
old; there the toilet-table, the armchair, and the footstool, at which I had a
hundred times been sentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for offences by me
uncommitted. I looked into a certain corner near, half-expecting to see the
slim outline of a once dreaded switch which used to lurk there, waiting to leap
out imp-like and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I approached the
bed; I opened the curtains and leant over the high-piled pillows.

Well did I remember Mrs. Reed’s face, and I eagerly sought the familiar image.
It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the
promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in bitterness and hate,
and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her
great sufferings, and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries—to
be reconciled and clasp hands in amity.

The well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever—there was that
peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised, imperious,
despotic eyebrow. How often had it lowered on me menace and hate! and how the
recollection of childhood’s terrors and sorrows revived as I traced its harsh
line now! And yet I stooped down and kissed her: she looked at me.

“Is this Jane Eyre?” she said.

“Yes, Aunt Reed. How are you, dear aunt?”

I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again: I thought it no sin to
forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened on her hand which lay
outside the sheet: had she pressed mine kindly, I should at that moment have
experienced true pleasure. But unimpressionable natures are not so soon
softened, nor are natural antipathies so readily eradicated. Mrs. Reed took her
hand away, and, turning her face rather from me, she remarked that the night
was warm. Again she regarded me so icily, I felt at once that her opinion of
me—her feeling towards me—was unchanged and unchangeable. I knew by her stony
eye—opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears—that she was resolved to
consider me bad to the last; because to believe me good would give her no
generous pleasure: only a sense of mortification.

I felt pain, and then I felt ire; and then I felt a determination to subdue
her—to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will. My tears had
risen, just as in childhood: I ordered them back to their source. I brought a
chair to the bed-head: I sat down and leaned over the pillow.

“You sent for me,” I said, “and I am here; and it is my intention to stay till
I see how you get on.”

“Oh, of course! You have seen my daughters?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some things over
with you I have on my mind: to-night it is too late, and I have a difficulty in
recalling them. But there was something I wished to say—let me see—”

The wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken place in her
once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the bedclothes round her; my
elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, fixed it down: she was at once
irritated.

“Sit up!” said she; “don’t annoy me with holding the clothes fast. Are you Jane
Eyre?”

“I am Jane Eyre.”

“I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe. Such a
burden to be left on my hands—and so much annoyance as she caused me, daily and
hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden starts of temper,
and her continual, unnatural watchings of one’s movements! I declare she talked
to me once like something mad, or like a fiend—no child ever spoke or looked as
she did; I was glad to get her away from the house. What did they do with her
at Lowood? The fever broke out there, and many of the pupils died. She,
however, did not die: but I said she did—I wish she had died!”

“A strange wish, Mrs. Reed; why do you hate her so?”

“I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband’s only sister,
and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family’s disowning her when she
made her low marriage; and when news came of her death, he wept like a
simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I entreated him rather to put it
out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my
eyes on it—a sickly, whining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all
night long—not screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and
moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it had
been his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his own at that age. He would
try to make my children friendly to the little beggar: the darlings could not
bear it, and he was angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his last
illness, he had it brought continually to his bedside; and but an hour before
he died, he bound me by vow to keep the creature. I would as soon have been
charged with a pauper brat out of a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally weak.
John does not at all resemble his father, and I am glad of it: John is like me
and like my brothers—he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish he would cease tormenting
me with letters for money! I have no more money to give him: we are getting
poor. I must send away half the servants and shut up part of the house; or let
it off. I can never submit to do that—yet how are we to get on? Two-thirds of
my income goes in paying the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully,
and always loses—poor boy! He is beset by sharpers: John is sunk and
degraded—his look is frightful—I feel ashamed for him when I see him.”

She was getting much excited. “I think I had better leave her now,” said I to
Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed.

“Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way towards night—in the
morning she is calmer.”

I rose. “Stop!” exclaimed Mrs. Reed, “there is another thing I wished to say.
He threatens me—he continually threatens me with his own death, or mine: and I
dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great wound in his throat, or
with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to a strange pass: I have heavy
troubles. What is to be done? How is the money to be had?”

Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught: she
succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed, and sank
into a dozing state. I then left her.

More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with her. She
continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor forbade everything
which could painfully excite her. Meantime, I got on as well as I could with
Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold, indeed, at first. Eliza would sit
half the day sewing, reading, or writing, and scarcely utter a word either to
me or her sister. Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the
hour, and take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for
occupation or amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me, and they
served me for both.

Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a
seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy
vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in
the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of sea between two
rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and
water-flags, and a naiad’s head, crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of
them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow’s nest, under a wreath of
hawthorn-bloom.

One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to be, I did
not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad point, and worked
away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent forehead and a
square lower outline of visage: that contour gave me pleasure; my fingers
proceeded actively to fill it with features. Strongly-marked horizontal
eyebrows must be traced under that brow; then followed, naturally, a
well-defined nose, with a straight ridge and full nostrils; then a
flexible-looking mouth, by no means narrow; then a firm chin, with a decided
cleft down the middle of it: of course, some black whiskers were wanted, and
some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and waved above the forehead. Now for
the eyes: I had left them to the last, because they required the most careful
working. I drew them large; I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and
sombre; the irids lustrous and large. “Good! but not quite the thing,” I
thought, as I surveyed the effect: “they want more force and spirit;” and I
wrought the shades blacker, that the lights might flash more brilliantly—a
happy touch or two secured success. There, I had a friend’s face under my gaze;
and what did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs on me? I
looked at it; I smiled at the speaking likeness: I was absorbed and content.

“Is that a portrait of some one you know?” asked Eliza, who had approached me
unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head, and hurried it beneath
the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it was, in fact, a very faithful
representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was that to her, or to any one but
myself? Georgiana also advanced to look. The other drawings pleased her much,
but she called that “an ugly man.” They both seemed surprised at my skill. I
offered to sketch their portraits; and each, in turn, sat for a pencil outline.
Then Georgiana produced her album. I promised to contribute a water-colour
drawing: this put her at once into good humour. She proposed a walk in the
grounds. Before we had been out two hours, we were deep in a confidential
conversation: she had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter
she had spent in London two seasons ago—of the admiration she had there
excited—the attention she had received; and I even got hints of the titled
conquest she had made. In the course of the afternoon and evening these hints
were enlarged on: various soft conversations were reported, and sentimental
scenes represented; and, in short, a volume of a novel of fashionable life was
that day improvised by her for my benefit. The communications were renewed from
day to day: they always ran on the same theme—herself, her loves, and woes. It
was strange she never once adverted either to her mother’s illness, or her
brother’s death, or the present gloomy state of the family prospects. Her mind
seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety, and aspirations after
dissipations to come. She passed about five minutes each day in her mother’s
sick-room, and no more.

Eliza still spoke little: she had evidently no time to talk. I never saw a
busier person than she seemed to be; yet it was difficult to say what she did:
or rather, to discover any result of her diligence. She had an alarm to call
her up early. I know not how she occupied herself before breakfast, but after
that meal she divided her time into regular portions, and each hour had its
allotted task. Three times a day she studied a little book, which I found, on
inspection, was a Common Prayer Book. I asked her once what was the great
attraction of that volume, and she said, “the Rubric.” Three hours she gave to
stitching, with gold thread, the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large
enough for a carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this article,
she informed me it was a covering for the altar of a new church lately erected
near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her diary; two to working by herself
in the kitchen-garden; and one to the regulation of her accounts. She seemed to
want no company; no conversation. I believe she was happy in her way: this
routine sufficed for her; and nothing annoyed her so much as the occurrence of
any incident which forced her to vary its clockwork regularity.

She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than usual,
that John’s conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had been a source
of profound affliction to her: but she had now, she said, settled her mind, and
formed her resolution. Her own fortune she had taken care to secure; and when
her mother died—and it was wholly improbable, she tranquilly remarked, that she
should either recover or linger long—she would execute a long-cherished
project: seek a retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured
from disturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous
world. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her.

“Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common: they never had had.
She would not be burdened with her society for any consideration. Georgiana
should take her own course; and she, Eliza, would take hers.”

Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her time in
lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house, and wishing over
and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an invitation up to town.
“It would be so much better,” she said, “if she could only get out of the way
for a month or two, till all was over.” I did not ask what she meant by “all
being over,” but I suppose she referred to the expected decease of her mother
and the gloomy sequel of funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of
her sister’s indolence and complaints than if no such murmuring, lounging
object had been before her. One day, however, as she put away her account-book
and unfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus—

“Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never allowed
to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make no use of life.
Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you
seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person’s strength: if no one
can be found willing to burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy,
useless thing, you cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable.
Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual change and
excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be
courted, you must be flattered—you must have music, dancing, and society—or you
languish, you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make
you independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day;
share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no stray
unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes—include all; do each
piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity. The day will
close almost before you are aware it has begun; and you are indebted to no one
for helping you to get rid of one vacant moment: you have had to seek no one’s
company, conversation, sympathy, forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an
independent being ought to do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall
offer you; then you will not want me or any one else, happen what may. Neglect
it—go on as heretofore, craving, whining, and idling—and suffer the results of
your idiocy, however bad and insufferable they may be. I tell you this plainly;
and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am now about to say, I
shall steadily act on it. After my mother’s death, I wash my hands of you: from
the day her coffin is carried to the vault in Gateshead Church, you and I will
be as separate as if we had never known each other. You need not think that
because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten
me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this—if the whole human
race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth,
I would leave you in the old world, and betake myself to the new.”

She closed her lips.

“You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade,”
answered Georgiana. “Everybody knows you are the most selfish, heartless
creature in existence: and I know your spiteful hatred towards me: I
have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me about Lord Edwin
Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above you, to have a title, to be
received into circles where you dare not show your face, and so you acted the
spy and informer, and ruined my prospects for ever.” Georgiana took out her
handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour afterwards; Eliza sat cold,
impassable, and assiduously industrious.

True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here were two
natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably savourless
for the want of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but
judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human
deglutition.

It was a wet and windy afternoon: Georgiana had fallen asleep on the sofa over
the perusal of a novel; Eliza was gone to attend a saint’s-day service at the
new church—for in matters of religion she was a rigid formalist: no weather
ever prevented the punctual discharge of what she considered her devotional
duties; fair or foul, she went to church thrice every Sunday, and as often on
week-days as there were prayers.

I bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped, who lay
there almost unheeded: the very servants paid her but a remittent attention:
the hired nurse, being little looked after, would slip out of the room whenever
she could. Bessie was faithful; but she had her own family to mind, and could
only come occasionally to the hall. I found the sick-room unwatched, as I had
expected: no nurse was there; the patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic;
her livid face sunk in the pillows: the fire was dying in the grate. I renewed
the fuel, re-arranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile on her who could not now
gaze on me, and then I moved away to the window.

The rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously: “One
lies there,” I thought, “who will soon be beyond the war of earthly elements.
Whither will that spirit—now struggling to quit its material tenement—flit when
at length released?”

In pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, recalled her dying
words—her faith—her doctrine of the equality of disembodied souls. I was still
listening in thought to her well-remembered tones—still picturing her pale and
spiritual aspect, her wasted face and sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid
deathbed, and whispered her longing to be restored to her divine Father’s
bosom—when a feeble voice murmured from the couch behind: “Who is that?”

I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days: was she reviving? I went up to her.

“It is I, Aunt Reed.”

“Who—I?” was her answer. “Who are you?” looking at me with surprise and a sort
of alarm, but still not wildly. “You are quite a stranger to me—where is
Bessie?”

“She is at the lodge, aunt.”

“Aunt,” she repeated. “Who calls me aunt? You are not one of the Gibsons; and
yet I know you—that face, and the eyes and forehead, are quiet familiar to me:
you are like—why, you are like Jane Eyre!”

I said nothing: I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring my
identity.

“Yet,” said she, “I am afraid it is a mistake: my thoughts deceive me. I wished
to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none exists: besides, in eight
years she must be so changed.” I now gently assured her that I was the person
she supposed and desired me to be: and seeing that I was understood, and that
her senses were quite collected, I explained how Bessie had sent her husband to
fetch me from Thornfield.

“I am very ill, I know,” she said ere long. “I was trying to turn myself a few
minutes since, and find I cannot move a limb. It is as well I should ease my
mind before I die: what we think little of in health, burdens us at such an
hour as the present is to me. Is the nurse here? or is there no one in the room
but you?”

I assured her we were alone.

“Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was in breaking
the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own child; the
other—” she stopped. “After all, it is of no great importance, perhaps,” she
murmured to herself: “and then I may get better; and to humble myself so to her
is painful.”

She made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face changed; she
seemed to experience some inward sensation—the precursor, perhaps, of the last
pang.

“Well, I must get it over. Eternity is before me: I had better tell her.—Go to
my dressing-case, open it, and take out a letter you will see there.”

I obeyed her directions. “Read the letter,” she said.

It was short, and thus conceived:—

“MADAM,—
“Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my niece, Jane Eyre, and
to tell me how she is? It is my intention to write shortly and desire her to
come to me at Madeira. Providence has blessed my endeavours to secure a
competency; and as I am unmarried and childless, I wish to adopt her during my
life, and bequeath her at my death whatever I may have to leave.

I am, Madam, &c., &c.,
“JOHN EYRE, Madeira.”

It was dated three years back.

“Why did I never hear of this?” I asked.

“Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand in
lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me, Jane—the fury
with which you once turned on me; the tone in which you declared you abhorred
me the worst of anybody in the world; the unchildlike look and voice with which
you affirmed that the very thought of me made you sick, and asserted that I had
treated you with miserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when
you thus started up and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear as if an
animal that I had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes and
cursed me in a man’s voice.—Bring me some water! Oh, make haste!”

“Dear Mrs. Reed,” said I, as I offered her the draught she required, “think no
more of all this, let it pass away from your mind. Forgive me for my passionate
language: I was a child then; eight, nine years have passed since that day.”

She heeded nothing of what I said; but when she had tasted the water and drawn
breath, she went on thus—

“I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be adopted
by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was what I could not
endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane
Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please:
write and contradict my assertion—expose my falsehood as soon as you like. You
were born, I think, to be my torment: my last hour is racked by the
recollection of a deed which, but for you, I should never have been tempted to
commit.”

“If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to regard me
with kindness and forgiveness——”

“You have a very bad disposition,” said she, “and one to this day I feel it
impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and quiescent
under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence, I can
never comprehend.”

“My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not
vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to love you
if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled to you now:
kiss me, aunt.”

I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She said I oppressed
her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water. As I laid her down—for I
raised her and supported her on my arm while she drank—I covered her ice-cold
and clammy hand with mine: the feeble fingers shrank from my touch—the glazing
eyes shunned my gaze.

“Love me, then, or hate me, as you will,” I said at last, “you have my full and
free forgiveness: ask now for God’s, and be at peace.”

Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the effort to change
her habitual frame of mind: living, she had ever hated me—dying, she must hate
me still.

The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered half-an-hour longer,
hoping to see some sign of amity: but she gave none. She was fast relapsing
into stupor; nor did her mind again rally: at twelve o’clock that night she
died. I was not present to close her eyes, nor were either of her daughters.
They came to tell us the next morning that all was over. She was by that time
laid out. Eliza and I went to look at her: Georgiana, who had burst out into
loud weeping, said she dared not go. There was stretched Sarah Reed’s once
robust and active frame, rigid and still: her eye of flint was covered with its
cold lid; her brow and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable
soul. A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with
gloom and pain: nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or hopeful, or
subduing did it inspire; only a grating anguish for her woes—not
my loss—and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such
a form.

Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some minutes she observed—

“With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age: her life was
shortened by trouble.” And then a spasm constricted her mouth for an instant:
as it passed away she turned and left the room, and so did I. Neither of us had
dropt a tear.