JANE EYRE
PART 14
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.
“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.”
To be continued
