Chương Chương 20 · I had forgotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also to

. 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.

“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?

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.”

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.”

“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?”

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.”