第 三十六 章 · The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or two

. The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or two

with arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe, in the

order wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief absence.

Meantime, I heard St. John quit his room. He stopped at my door: I

feared he would knock—no, but a slip of paper was passed under the

door. I took it up. It bore these words—

“You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little

longer, you would have laid your hand on the Christian’s cross and the

angel’s crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I return this

day fortnight. Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not into

temptation: the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh, I see, is

weak. I shall pray for you hourly.—Yours, ST. JOHN.”

“My spirit,” I answered mentally, “is willing to do what is right; and

my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven,

when once that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate, it shall be

strong enough to search—inquire—to grope an outlet from this cloud of

doubt, and find the open day of certainty.”

It was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and chilly: rain

beat fast on my casement. I heard the front-door open, and St. John

pass out. Looking through the window, I saw him traverse the garden. He

took the way over the misty moors in the direction of Whitcross—there

he would meet the coach.

“In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin,”

thought I: “I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross. I too have some to

see and ask after in England, before I depart for ever.”

It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time. I filled the interval in

walking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which had

given my plans their present bent. I recalled that inward sensation I

had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable

strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned

whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in _me_—not in the

external world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression—a delusion? I

could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration. The

wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the

foundations of Paul and Silas’s prison; it had opened the doors of the

soul’s cell and loosed its bands—it had wakened it out of its sleep,

whence it sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a

cry on my startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit,

which neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the

success of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of

the cumbrous body.

“Ere many days,” I said, as I terminated my musings, “I will know

something of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Letters

have proved of no avail—personal inquiry shall replace them.”

At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a journey,

and should be absent at least four days.

“Alone, Jane?” they asked.

“Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for some

time been uneasy.”

They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they had

believed me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed, I had

often said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they abstained

from comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was well

enough to travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I replied, that

nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped soon to alleviate.

It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled with no

inquiries—no surmises. Having once explained to them that I could not

now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely acquiesced in

the silence with which I pursued them, according to me the privilege of

free action I should under similar circumstances have accorded them.

I left Moor House at three o’clock P.M., and soon after four I stood at

the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival of the

coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst the silence of

those solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it approach from a great

distance. It was the same vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted

one summer evening on this very spot—how desolate, and hopeless, and

objectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I entered—not now obliged to part

with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more on

the road to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.

It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from Whitcross

on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday morning

the coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn, situated in the

midst of scenery whose green hedges and large fields and low pastoral

hills (how mild of feature and verdant of hue compared with the stern

North-Midland moors of Morton!) met my eye like the lineaments of a

once familiar face. Yes, I knew the character of this landscape: I was

sure we were near my bourne.

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

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

“My journey is closed,” I thought to myself. I got out of the coach,

gave a box I had into the ostler’s charge, to be kept till I called for

it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going: the

brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I read in gilt

letters, “The Rochester Arms.” My heart leapt up: I was already on my

master’s very lands. It fell again: the thought struck it:—

“Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you

know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you hasten,

who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do

with him: you dare not speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost

your labour—you had better go no farther,” urged the monitor. “Ask

information of the people at the inn; they can give you all you seek:

they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to that man, and inquire if

Mr. Rochester be at home.”

The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on

it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong

doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the

ray of her star. There was the stile before me—the very fields through

which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted with a revengeful fury

tracking and scourging me, on the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I

well knew what course I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of

them. How fast I walked! How I ran sometimes! How I looked forward to

catch the first view of the well-known woods! With what feelings I

welcomed single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill

between them!

At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing broke

the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on I hastened.

Another field crossed—a lane threaded—and there were the courtyard

walls—the back offices: the house itself, the rookery still hid. “My

first view of it shall be in front,” I determined, “where its bold

battlements will strike the eye nobly at once, and where I can single

out my master’s very window: perhaps he will be standing at it—he rises

early: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in

front. Could I but see him!—but a moment! Surely, in that case, I

should not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell—I am not certain.

And if I did—what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be hurt by

my once more tasting the life his glance can give me? I rave: perhaps

at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees, or on the

tideless sea of the south.”

I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard—turned its angle:

there was a gate just there, opening into the meadow, between two stone

pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one pillar I could peep

round quietly at the full front of the mansion. I advanced my head with

precaution, desirous to ascertain if any bedroom window-blinds were yet

drawn up: battlements, windows, long front—all from this sheltered

station were at my command.

The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this survey.

I wonder what they thought. They must have considered I was very

careful and timid at first, and that gradually I grew very bold and

reckless. A peep, and then a long stare; and then a departure from my

niche and a straying out into the meadow; and a sudden stop full in

front of the great mansion, and a protracted, hardy gaze towards it.

“What affectation of diffidence was this at first?” they might have

demanded; “what stupid regardlessness now?”

Hear an illustration, reader.

A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a

glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals softly over the

grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses—fancying she has stirred: he

withdraws: not for worlds would he be seen. All is still: he again

advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he

lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of

beauty—warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How hurried was their

first glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and

vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since,

touch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden,

and gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he

no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter—by any movement he

can make. He thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone

dead.

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

ruin.

No need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed!—to peep up at chamber

lattices, fearing life was astir behind them! No need to listen for

doors opening—to fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk! The

lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: the portal yawned void. The

front was, as I had once seen it in a dream, but a shell-like wall,

very high and very fragile-looking, perforated with paneless windows:

no roof, no battlements, no chimneys—all had crashed in.

And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a lonesome

wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here had never

received an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in a church

aisle. The grim blackness of the stones told by what fate the Hall had

fallen—by conflagration: but how kindled? What story belonged to this

disaster? What loss, besides mortar and marble and wood-work had

followed upon it? Had life been wrecked as well as property? If so,

whose? Dreadful question: there was no one here to answer it—not even

dumb sign, mute token.

In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated

interior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late

occurrence. Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that void

arch, winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements; for, amidst the

drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation: grass and

weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen rafters. And oh!

where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck? In what land? Under

what auspices? My eye involuntarily wandered to the grey church tower

near the gates, and I asked, “Is he with Damer de Rochester, sharing

the shelter of his narrow marble house?”

Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere but

at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himself brought

my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the door and sit

down: I had some questions to ask him. But when he complied, I scarcely

knew how to begin; such horror had I of the possible answers. And yet

the spectacle of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure

for a tale of misery. The host was a respectable-looking, middle-aged

man.

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

“Yes, ma’am; I lived there once.”

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

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

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

trying to evade.

“The late!” I gasped. “Is he dead?”

“I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward’s father,” he explained. I

breathed again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully assured by these words

that Mr. Edward—_my_ Mr. Rochester (God bless him, wherever he

was!)—was at least alive: was, in short, “the present gentleman.”

Gladdening words! It seemed I could hear all that was to come—whatever

the disclosures might be—with comparative tranquillity. Since he was

not in the grave, I could bear, I thought, to learn that he was at the

Antipodes.

“Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?” I asked, knowing, of

course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring the

direct question as to where he really was.

“No, ma’am—oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a stranger

in these parts, or you would have heard what happened last

autumn,—Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about

harvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable

property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could be saved. The

fire broke out at dead of night, and before the engines arrived from

Millcote, the building was one mass of flame. It was a terrible

spectacle: I witnessed it myself.”

“At dead of night!” I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour of fatality

at Thornfield. “Was it known how it originated?” I demanded.

“They guessed, ma’am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was

ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware,” he continued,

edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking low, “that

there was a lady—a—a lunatic, kept in the house?”

“I have heard something of it.”

“She was kept in very close confinement, ma’am; people even for some

years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw her: they

only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall; and who or what

she was it was difficult to conjecture. They said Mr. Edward had

brought her from abroad, and some believed she had been his mistress.

But a queer thing happened a year since—a very queer thing.”

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

main fact.

“And this lady?”

“This lady, ma’am,” he answered, “turned out to be Mr. Rochester’s

wife! The discovery was brought about in the strangest way. There was a

young lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in—”

“But the fire,” I suggested.

“I’m coming to that, ma’am—that Mr. Edward fell in love with. The

servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was: he was

after her continually. They used to watch him—servants will, you know,

ma’am—and he set store on her past everything: for all, nobody but him

thought her so very handsome. She was a little small thing, they say,

almost like a child. I never saw her myself; but I’ve heard Leah, the

house-maid, tell of her. Leah liked her well enough. Mr. Rochester was

about forty, and this governess not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen

of his age fall in love with girls, they are often like as if they were

bewitched. Well, he would marry her.”

“You shall tell me this part of the story another time,” I said; “but

now I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about the fire.

Was it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had any hand in

it?”

“You’ve hit it, ma’am: it’s quite certain that it was her, and nobody

but her, that set it going. She had a woman to take care of her called

Mrs. Poole—an able woman in her line, and very trustworthy, but for one

fault—a fault common to a deal of them nurses and matrons—_she kept a

private bottle of gin by her_, and now and then took a drop over-much.

It is excusable, for she had a hard life of it: but still it was

dangerous; for when Mrs. Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water,

the mad lady, who was as cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of

her pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the

house, doing any wild mischief that came into her head. They say she

had nearly burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don’t know about

that. However, on this night, she set fire first to the hangings of the

room next her own, and then she got down to a lower storey, and made

her way to the chamber that had been the governess’s—(she was like as

if she knew somehow how matters had gone on, and had a spite at

her)—and she kindled the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in

it, fortunately. The governess had run away two months before; and for

all Mr. Rochester sought her as if she had been the most precious thing

he had in the world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew

savage—quite savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but

he got dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent

Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but

he did it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and

she deserved it—she was a very good woman. Miss Adèle, a ward he had,

was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry, and

shut himself up like a hermit at the Hall.”

“What! did he not leave England?”

“Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stones of

the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost about the

grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses—which it is my

opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he

was before that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma’am.

He was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are, and

he was not so very handsome; but he had a courage and a will of his

own, if ever man had. I knew him from a boy, you see: and for my part,

I have often wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she

came to Thornfield Hall.”

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

“Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was burning

above and below, and got the servants out of their beds and helped them

down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And

then they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she was

standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting out till

they could hear her a mile off: I saw her and heard her with my own

eyes. She was a big woman, and had long black hair: we could see it

streaming against the flames as she stood. I witnessed, and several

more witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend through the sky-light on to the

roof; we heard him call ‘Bertha!’ We saw him approach her; and then,

ma’am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay

smashed on the pavement.”

The next minute she lay smashed on the pavement

“Dead?”

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

scattered.”

“Good God!”

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

He shuddered.

“And afterwards?” I urged.

“Well, ma’am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: there are

only some bits of walls standing now.”

“Were any other lives lost?”

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

“What do you mean?”

“Poor Mr. Edward!” he ejaculated, “I little thought ever to have seen

it! Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his first

marriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while he had one

living: but I pity him, for my part.”

“You said he was alive?” I exclaimed.

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

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

“Is he in England?”

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

fixture now.”

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

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

Edward.”

I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strength to

ask what had caused this calamity.

“It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a

way, ma’am: he wouldn’t leave the house till every one else was out

before him. As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs.

Rochester had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great

crash—all fell. He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but sadly

hurt: a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him partly; but one

eye was knocked out, and one hand so crushed that Mr. Carter, the

surgeon, had to amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed: he lost

the sight of that also. He is now helpless, indeed—blind and a

cripple.”

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

“At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off:

quite a desolate spot.”

“Who is with him?”

“Old John and his wife: he would have none else. He is quite broken

down, they say.”

“Have you any sort of conveyance?”

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

“Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me to

Ferndean before dark this day, I’ll pay both you and him twice the hire

you usually demand.”