No More Learning

I don't know what sphynx-like expression is forming
in your countenance. You are to share my solitude. Do you understand? "

I shook my head: it required a degree of courage, excited as he was
becoming, even to risk that mute sign of dissent. He had been walking
fast about the room, and he stopped, as if suddenly rooted to one spot.
He looked at me long and hard: I turned my eyes from him, fixed them on
the fire, and tried to assume and maintain a quiet, collected aspect.

"Now for the hitch in Jane's character," he said at last, speaking more
calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. "The reel of silk
has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot
and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and
endless trouble! By God! I long to exert a fraction of Samson's
strength, and break the entanglement like tow! "

He recommenced his walk, but soon again stopped, and this time just
before me.

"Jane! will you hear reason? " (he stooped and approached his lips to my
ear); "because, if you won't, I'll try violence. " His voice was hoarse;
his look that of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond
and plunge headlong into wild license. I saw that in another moment, and
with one impetus of frenzy more, I should be able to do nothing with him.
The present--the passing second of time--was all I had in which to
control and restrain him--a movement of repulsion, flight, fear would
have sealed my doom,--and his. But I was not afraid: not in the least. I
felt an inward power; a sense of influence, which supported me. The
crisis was perilous; but not without its charm: such as the Indian,
perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I took hold of
his clenched hand, loosened the contorted fingers, and said to him,
soothingly--

"Sit down; I'll talk to you as long as you like, and hear all you have to
say, whether reasonable or unreasonable. "

He sat down: but he did not get leave to speak directly. I had been
struggling with tears for some time: I had taken great pains to repress
them, because I knew he would not like to see me weep. Now, however, I
considered it well to let them flow as freely and as long as they liked.
If the flood annoyed him, so much the better. So I gave way and cried
heartily.

Soon I heard him earnestly entreating me to be composed. I said I could
not while he was in such a passion.

"But I am not angry, Jane: I only love you too well; and you had steeled
your little pale face with such a resolute, frozen look, I could not
endure it. Hush, now, and wipe your eyes. "

His softened voice announced that he was subdued; so I, in my turn,
became calm. Now he made an effort to rest his head on my shoulder, but
I would not permit it. Then he would draw me to him: no.

"Jane! Jane! " he said, in such an accent of bitter sadness it thrilled
along every nerve I had; "you don't love me, then? It was only my
station, and the rank of my wife, that you valued? Now that you think me
disqualified to become your husband, you recoil from my touch as if I
were some toad or ape. "

These words cut me: yet what could I do or I say? I ought probably to
have done or said nothing; but I was so tortured by a sense of remorse at
thus hurting his feelings, I could not control the wish to drop balm
where I had wounded.

"I _do_ love you," I said, "more than ever: but I must not show or
indulge the feeling: and this is the last time I must express it. "

"The last time, Jane! What! do you think you can live with me, and see
me daily, and yet, if you still love me, be always cold and distant? "

"No, sir; that I am certain I could not; and therefore I see there is but
one way: but you will be furious if I mention it. "

"Oh, mention it! If I storm, you have the art of weeping. "

"Mr. Rochester, I must leave you. "

"For how long, Jane? For a few minutes, while you smooth your hair--which
is somewhat dishevelled; and bathe your face--which looks feverish? "

"I must leave Adele and Thornfield. I must part with you for my whole
life: I must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange
scenes. "

"Of course: I told you you should. I pass over the madness about parting
from me. You mean you must become a part of me. As to the new
existence, it is all right: you shall yet be my wife: I am not married.
You shall be Mrs. Rochester--both virtually and nominally. I shall keep
only to you so long as you and I live. You shall go to a place I have in
the south of France: a whitewashed villa on the shores of the
Mediterranean. There you shall live a happy, and guarded, and most
innocent life. Never fear that I wish to lure you into error--to make
you my mistress. Why did you shake your head? Jane, you must be
reasonable, or in truth I shall again become frantic. "

His voice and hand quivered: his large nostrils dilated; his eye blazed:
still I dared to speak.

"Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact acknowledged this morning by
yourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your
mistress: to say otherwise is sophistical--is false. "

"Jane, I am not a gentle-tempered man--you forget that: I am not long-
enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me and
yourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and--beware! "

He bared his wrist, and offered it to me: the blood was forsaking his
cheek and lips, they were growing livid; I was distressed on all hands.
To agitate him thus deeply, by a resistance he so abhorred, was cruel: to
yield was out of the question. I did what human beings do instinctively
when they are driven to utter extremity--looked for aid to one higher
than man: the words "God help me! " burst involuntarily from my lips.

"I am a fool! " cried Mr. Rochester suddenly. "I keep telling her I am
not married, and do not explain to her why. I forget she knows nothing
of the character of that woman, or of the circumstances attending my
infernal union with her. Oh, I am certain Jane will agree with me in
opinion, when she knows all that I know! Just put your hand in mine,
Janet--that I may have the evidence of touch as well as sight, to prove
you are near me--and I will in a few words show you the real state of the
case. Can you listen to me? "

"Yes, sir; for hours if you will. "

"I ask only minutes. Jane, did you ever hear or know that I was not the
eldest son of my house: that I had once a brother older than I? "

"I remember Mrs. Fairfax told me so once. "

"And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious, grasping man? "

"I have understood something to that effect. "

"Well, Jane, being so, it was his resolution to keep the property
together; he could not bear the idea of dividing his estate and leaving
me a fair portion: all, he resolved, should go to my brother, Rowland.
Yet as little could he endure that a son of his should be a poor man. I
must be provided for by a wealthy marriage. He sought me a partner
betimes. Mr. Mason, a West India planter and merchant, was his old
acquaintance. He was certain his possessions were real and vast: he made
inquiries. Mr. Mason, he found, had a son and daughter; and he learned
from him that he could and would give the latter a fortune of thirty
thousand pounds: that sufficed. When I left college, I was sent out to
Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me. My father said
nothing about her money; but he told me Miss Mason was the boast of
Spanish Town for her beauty: and this was no lie. I found her a fine
woman, in the style of Blanche Ingram: tall, dark, and majestic. Her
family wished to secure me because I was of a good race; and so did she.
They showed her to me in parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom saw her
alone, and had very little private conversation with her. She flattered
me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and
accomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to admire her and envy
me. I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and being
ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her. There is no
folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience,
the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its
commission. Her relatives encouraged me; competitors piqued me; she
allured me: a marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was. Oh,
I have no respect for myself when I think of that act! --an agony of
inward contempt masters me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not
even know her. I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her
nature: I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor
refinement in her mind or manners--and, I married her:--gross,
grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was! With less sin I might
have--But let me remember to whom I am speaking. "

"My bride's mother I had never seen: I understood she was dead. The
honeymoon over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and shut up in a
lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother, too--a complete dumb idiot.
The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom I cannot hate, whilst I abhor
all his kindred, because he has some grains of affection in his feeble
mind, shown in the continued interest he takes in his wretched sister,
and also in a dog-like attachment he once bore me), will probably be in
the same state one day. My father and my brother Rowland knew all this;
but they thought only of the thirty thousand pounds, and joined in the
plot against me. "

"These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery of
concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife,
even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious
to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of
being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger--when I found
that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day
with her in comfort; that kindly conversation could not be sustained
between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from
her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile--when I
perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because
no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and
unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory,
exacting orders--even then I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I
curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in
secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt.

"Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details: some strong words
shall express what I have to say. I lived with that woman upstairs four
years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: her character
ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast
and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check them, and I would
not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had, and what giant
propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on
me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me
through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man
bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste.

"My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four years my
father died too. I was rich enough now--yet poor to hideous indigence: a
nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was associated with
mine, and called by the law and by society a part of me. And I could not
rid myself of it by any legal proceedings: for the doctors now discovered
that _my wife_ was mad--her excesses had prematurely developed the germs
of insanity. Jane, you don't like my narrative; you look almost
sick--shall I defer the rest to another day? "

"No, sir, finish it now; I pity you--I do earnestly pity you. "

"Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute,
which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer
it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is
a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant
contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not your pity,
Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this
moment--with which your eyes are now almost overflowing--with which your
heart is heaving--with which your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity,
my darling, is the suffering mother of love: its anguish is the very
natal pang of the divine passion. I accept it, Jane; let the daughter
have free advent--my arms wait to receive her. "

"Now, sir, proceed; what did you do when you found she was mad? "

"Jane, I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self-respect was
all that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes of the world, I
was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour; but I resolved to be clean in
my own sight--and to the last I repudiated the contamination of her
crimes, and wrenched myself from connection with her mental defects.
Still, society associated my name and person with hers; I yet saw her and
heard her daily: something of her breath (faugh! ) mixed with the air I
breathed; and besides, I remembered I had once been her husband--that
recollection was then, and is now, inexpressibly odious to me; moreover,
I knew that while she lived I could never be the husband of another and
better wife; and, though five years my senior (her family and her father
had lied to me even in the particular of her age), she was likely to live
as long as I, being as robust in frame as she was infirm in mind. Thus,
at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless.

"One night I had been awakened by her yells--(since the medical men had
pronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up)--it was a fiery
West Indian night; one of the description that frequently precede the
hurricanes of those climates. Being unable to sleep in bed, I got up and
opened the window. The air was like sulphur-steams--I could find no
refreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed sullenly
round the room; the sea, which I could hear from thence, rumbled dull
like an earthquake--black clouds were casting up over it; the moon was
setting in the waves, broad and red, like a hot cannon-ball--she threw
her last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of
tempest. I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and my
ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein
she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with such
language! --no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she:
though two rooms off, I heard every word--the thin partitions of the West
India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish cries.

"'This life,' said I at last, 'is hell: this is the air--those are the
sounds of the bottomless pit! I have a right to deliver myself from it
if I can. The sufferings of this mortal state will leave me with the
heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul. Of the fanatic's burning eternity
I have no fear: there is not a future state worse than this present
one--let me break away, and go home to God! '

"I said this whilst I knelt down at, and unlocked a trunk which contained
a brace of loaded pistols: I mean to shoot myself. I only entertained
the intention for a moment; for, not being insane, the crisis of
exquisite and unalloyed despair, which had originated the wish and design
of self-destruction, was past in a second.

"A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through the open
casement: the storm broke, streamed, thundered, blazed, and the air grew
pure. I then framed and fixed a resolution. While I walked under the
dripping orange-trees of my wet garden, and amongst its drenched
pomegranates and pine-apples, and while the refulgent dawn of the tropics
kindled round me--I reasoned thus, Jane--and now listen; for it was true
Wisdom that consoled me in that hour, and showed me the right path to
follow.

"The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed leaves,
and the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty; my heart, dried up
and scorched for a long time, swelled to the tone, and filled with living
blood--my being longed for renewal--my soul thirsted for a pure draught.
I saw hope revive--and felt regeneration possible. From a flowery arch
at the bottom of my garden I gazed over the sea--bluer than the sky: the
old world was beyond; clear prospects opened thus:--

"'Go,' said Hope, 'and live again in Europe: there it is not known what a
sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you. You may
take the maniac with you to England; confine her with due attendance and
precautions at Thornfield: then travel yourself to what clime you will,
and form what new tie you like. That woman, who has so abused your long-
suffering, so sullied your name, so outraged your honour, so blighted
your youth, is not your wife, nor are you her husband. See that she is
cared for as her condition demands, and you have done all that God and
humanity require of you. Let her identity, her connection with yourself,
be buried in oblivion: you are bound to impart them to no living being.
Place her in safety and comfort: shelter her degradation with secrecy,
and leave her. '

"I acted precisely on this suggestion. My father and brother had not
made my marriage known to their acquaintance; because, in the very first
letter I wrote to apprise them of the union--having already begun to
experience extreme disgust of its consequences, and, from the family
character and constitution, seeing a hideous future opening to me--I
added an urgent charge to keep it secret: and very soon the infamous
conduct of the wife my father had selected for me was such as to make him
blush to own her as his daughter-in-law. Far from desiring to publish
the connection, he became as anxious to conceal it as myself.

"To England, then, I conveyed her; a fearful voyage I had with such a
monster in the vessel. Glad was I when I at last got her to Thornfield,
and saw her safely lodged in that third-storey room, of whose secret
inner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild beast's den--a
goblin's cell. I had some trouble in finding an attendant for her, as it
was necessary to select one on whose fidelity dependence could be placed;
for her ravings would inevitably betray my secret: besides, she had lucid
intervals of days--sometimes weeks--which she filled up with abuse of me.
At last I hired Grace Poole from the Grimbsy Retreat. She and the
surgeon, Carter (who dressed Mason's wounds that night he was stabbed and
worried), are the only two I have ever admitted to my confidence. Mrs.
Fairfax may indeed have suspected something, but she could have gained no
precise knowledge as to facts. Grace has, on the whole, proved a good
keeper; though, owing partly to a fault of her own, of which it appears
nothing can cure her, and which is incident to her harassing profession,
her vigilance has been more than once lulled and baffled. The lunatic is
both cunning and malignant; she has never failed to take advantage of her
guardian's temporary lapses; once to secrete the knife with which she
stabbed her brother, and twice to possess herself of the key of her cell,
and issue therefrom in the night-time. On the first of these occasions,
she perpetrated the attempt to burn me in my bed; on the second, she paid
that ghastly visit to you. I thank Providence, who watched over you,
that she then spent her fury on your wedding apparel, which perhaps
brought back vague reminiscences of her own bridal days: but on what
might have happened, I cannot endure to reflect. When I think of the
thing which flew at my throat this morning, hanging its black and scarlet
visage over the nest of my dove, my blood curdles--"

"And what, sir," I asked, while he paused, "did you do when you had
settled her here? Where did you go? "

"What did I do, Jane? I transformed myself into a will-o'-the-wisp.
Where did I go? I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the
March-spirit. I sought the Continent, and went devious through all its
lands. My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent
woman, whom I could love: a contrast to the fury I left at Thornfield--"

"But you could not marry, sir. "

"I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought. It was not
my original intention to deceive, as I have deceived you. I meant to
tell my tale plainly, and make my proposals openly: and it appeared to me
so absolutely rational that I should be considered free to love and be
loved, I never doubted some woman might be found willing and able to
understand my case and accept me, in spite of the curse with which I was
burdened. "

"Well, sir? "

"When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You open your
eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless movement,
as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you, and you wanted
to read the tablet of one's heart. But before I go on, tell me what you
mean by your 'Well, sir? ' It is a small phrase very frequent with you;
and which many a time has drawn me on and on through interminable talk: I
don't very well know why. "

"I mean,--What next? How did you proceed? What came of such an event? "

"Precisely! and what do you wish to know now? "

"Whether you found any one you liked: whether you asked her to marry you;
and what she said.
"

"I can tell you whether I found any one I liked, and whether I asked her
to marry me: but what she said is yet to be recorded in the book of Fate.
For ten long years I roved about, living first in one capital, then
another: sometimes in St. Petersburg; oftener in Paris; occasionally in
Rome, Naples, and Florence. Provided with plenty of money and the
passport of an old name, I could choose my own society: no circles were
closed against me. I sought my ideal of a woman amongst English ladies,
French countesses, Italian signoras, and German grafinnen. I could not
find her. Sometimes, for a fleeting moment, I thought I caught a glance,
heard a tone, beheld a form, which announced the realisation of my dream:
but I was presently undeserved. You are not to suppose that I desired
perfection, either of mind or person. I longed only for what suited
me--for the antipodes of the Creole: and I longed vainly. Amongst them
all I found not one whom, had I been ever so free, I--warned as I was of
the risks, the horrors, the loathings of incongruous unions--would have
asked to marry me. Disappointment made me reckless. I tried
dissipation--never debauchery: that I hated, and hate. That was my
Indian Messalina's attribute: rooted disgust at it and her restrained me
much, even in pleasure. Any enjoyment that bordered on riot seemed to
approach me to her and her vices, and I eschewed it.

"Yet I could not live alone; so I tried the companionship of mistresses.
The first I chose was Celine Varens--another of those steps which make a
man spurn himself when he recalls them. You already know what she was,
and how my liaison with her terminated. She had two successors: an
Italian, Giacinta, and a German, Clara; both considered singularly
handsome. What was their beauty to me in a few weeks? Giacinta was
unprincipled and violent: I tired of her in three months. Clara was
honest and quiet; but heavy, mindless, and unimpressible: not one whit to
my taste. I was glad to give her a sufficient sum to set her up in a
good line of business, and so get decently rid of her. But, Jane, I see
by your face you are not forming a very favourable opinion of me just
now. You think me an unfeeling, loose-principled rake: don't you? "

"I don't like you so well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir. Did it
not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way, first with one
mistress and then another? You talk of it as a mere matter of course. "

"It was with me; and I did not like it. It was a grovelling fashion of
existence: I should never like to return to it. Hiring a mistress is the
next worse thing to buying a slave: both are often by nature, and always
by position, inferior: and to live familiarly with inferiors is
degrading. I now hate the recollection of the time I passed with Celine,
Giacinta, and Clara. "

I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain
inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching
that had ever been instilled into me, as--under any pretext--with any
justification--through any temptation--to become the successor of these
poor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now in
his mind desecrated their memory. I did not give utterance to this
conviction: it was enough to feel it. I impressed it on my heart, that
it might remain there to serve me as aid in the time of trial.

"Now, Jane, why don't you say 'Well, sir? ' I have not done. You are
looking grave. You disapprove of me still, I see. But let me come to
the point. Last January, rid of all mistresses--in a harsh, bitter frame
of mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely life--corroded with
disappointment, sourly disposed against all men, and especially against
all womankind (for I began to regard the notion of an intellectual,
faithful, loving woman as a mere dream), recalled by business, I came
back to England.

"On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall.
Abhorred spot! I expected no peace--no pleasure there. On a stile in
Hay Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself. I passed it as
negligently as I did the pollard willow opposite to it: I had no
presentiment of what it would be to me; no inward warning that the
arbitress of my life--my genius for good or evil--waited there in humble
guise. I did not know it, even when, on the occasion of Mesrour's
accident, it came up and gravely offered me help. Childish and slender
creature! It seemed as if a linnet had hopped to my foot and proposed to
bear me on its tiny wing. I was surly; but the thing would not go: it
stood by me with strange perseverance, and looked and spoke with a sort
of authority. I must be aided, and by that hand: and aided I was.

"When once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new--a fresh sap
and sense--stole into my frame. It was well I had learnt that this elf
must return to me--that it belonged to my house down below--or I could
not have felt it pass away from under my hand, and seen it vanish behind
the dim hedge, without singular regret. I heard you come home that
night, Jane, though probably you were not aware that I thought of you or
watched for you. The next day I observed you--myself unseen--for half-an-
hour, while you played with Adele in the gallery. It was a snowy day, I
recollect, and you could not go out of doors. I was in my room; the door
was ajar: I could both listen and watch. Adele claimed your outward
attention for a while; yet I fancied your thoughts were elsewhere: but
you were very patient with her, my little Jane; you talked to her and
amused her a long time. When at last she left you, you lapsed at once
into deep reverie: you betook yourself slowly to pace the gallery. Now
and then, in passing a casement, you glanced out at the thick-falling
snow; you listened to the sobbing wind, and again you paced gently on and
dreamed. I think those day visions were not dark: there was a
pleasurable illumination in your eye occasionally, a soft excitement in
your aspect, which told of no bitter, bilious, hypochondriac brooding:
your look revealed rather the sweet musings of youth when its spirit
follows on willing wings the flight of Hope up and on to an ideal heaven.
The voice of Mrs. Fairfax, speaking to a servant in the hall, wakened
you: and how curiously you smiled to and at yourself, Janet! There was
much sense in your smile: it was very shrewd, and seemed to make light of
your own abstraction. It seemed to say--'My fine visions are all very
well, but I must not forget they are absolutely unreal. I have a rosy
sky and a green flowery Eden in my brain; but without, I am perfectly
aware, lies at my feet a rough tract to travel, and around me gather
black tempests to encounter. ' You ran downstairs and demanded of Mrs.
Fairfax some occupation: the weekly house accounts to make up, or
something of that sort, I think it was. I was vexed with you for getting
out of my sight.

"Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you to my
presence. An unusual--to me--a perfectly new character I suspected was
yours: I desired to search it deeper and know it better. You entered the
room with a look and air at once shy and independent: you were quaintly
dressed--much as you are now. I made you talk: ere long I found you full
of strange contrasts. Your garb and manner were restricted by rule; your
air was often diffident, and altogether that of one refined by nature,
but absolutely unused to society, and a good deal afraid of making
herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or blunder; yet
when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing eye to your
interlocutor's face: there was penetration and power in each glance you
gave; when plied by close questions, you found ready and round answers.
Very soon you seemed to get used to me: I believe you felt the existence
of sympathy between you and your grim and cross master, Jane; for it was
astonishing to see how quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquillised your
manner: snarl as I would, you showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or
displeasure at my moroseness; you watched me, and now and then smiled at
me with a simple yet sagacious grace I cannot describe. I was at once
content and stimulated with what I saw: I liked what I had seen, and
wished to see more. Yet, for a long time, I treated you distantly, and
sought your company rarely. I was an intellectual epicure, and wished to
prolong the gratification of making this novel and piquant acquaintance:
besides, I was for a while troubled with a haunting fear that if I
handled the flower freely its bloom would fade--the sweet charm of
freshness would leave it. I did not then know that it was no transitory
blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an
indestructible gem. Moreover, I wished to see whether you would seek me
if I shunned you--but you did not; you kept in the schoolroom as still as
your own desk and easel; if by chance I met you, you passed me as soon,
and with as little token of recognition, as was consistent with respect.
Your habitual expression in those days, Jane, was a thoughtful look; not
despondent, for you were not sickly; but not buoyant, for you had little
hope, and no actual pleasure. I wondered what you thought of me, or if
you ever thought of me, and resolved to find this out.

"I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in your glance,
and genial in your manner, when you conversed: I saw you had a social
heart; it was the silent schoolroom--it was the tedium of your life--that
made you mournful. I permitted myself the delight of being kind to you;
kindness stirred emotion soon: your face became soft in expression, your
tones gentle; I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful happy
accent. I used to enjoy a chance meeting with you, Jane, at this time:
there was a curious hesitation in your manner: you glanced at me with a
slight trouble--a hovering doubt: you did not know what my caprice might
be--whether I was going to play the master and be stern, or the friend
and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often to simulate the first
whim; and, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such bloom and light
and bliss rose to your young, wistful features, I had much ado often to
avoid straining you then and there to my heart. "

"Don't talk any more of those days, sir," I interrupted, furtively
dashing away some tears from my eyes; his language was torture to me; for
I knew what I must do--and do soon--and all these reminiscences, and
these revelations of his feelings only made my work more difficult.

"No, Jane," he returned: "what necessity is there to dwell on the Past,
when the Present is so much surer--the Future so much brighter? "

I shuddered to hear the infatuated assertion.

"You see now how the case stands--do you not? " he continued. "After a
youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary
solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love--I have
found you. You are my sympathy--my better self--my good angel. I am
bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely:
a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you,
draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you,
and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.

"It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry you. To
tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery: you know now that I
had but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I
feared a stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early
instilled prejudice: I wanted to have you safe before hazarding
confidences. This was cowardly: I should have appealed to your nobleness
and magnanimity at first, as I do now--opened to you plainly my life of
agony--described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier
existence--shown to you, not my _resolution_ (that word is weak), but my
resistless _bent_ to love faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and
well loved in return. Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge
of fidelity and to give me yours. Jane--give it me now. "

A pause.

"Why are you silent, Jane? "

I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals.
Terrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning! Not a human being
that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved; and him
who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce love and
idol. One drear word comprised my intolerable duty--"Depart! "

"Jane, you understand what I want of you? Just this promise--'I will be
yours, Mr. Rochester. '"

"Mr. Rochester, I will _not_ be yours. "

Another long silence.

"Jane! " recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down with grief,
and turned me stone-cold with ominous terror--for this still voice was
the pant of a lion rising--"Jane, do you mean to go one way in the world,
and to let me go another? "

"I do. "

"Jane" (bending towards and embracing me), "do you mean it now? "

"I do. "

"And now? " softly kissing my forehead and cheek.

"I do," extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely.

"Oh, Jane, this is bitter! This--this is wicked. It would not be wicked
to love me. "

"It would to obey you. "

A wild look raised his brows--crossed his features: he rose; but he
forebore yet. I laid my hand on the back of a chair for support: I
shook, I feared--but I resolved.

"One instant, Jane. Give one glance to my horrible life when you are
gone. All happiness will be torn away with you. What then is left? For
a wife I have but the maniac upstairs: as well might you refer me to some
corpse in yonder churchyard. What shall I do, Jane? Where turn for a
companion and for some hope? "

"Do as I do: trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet
again there. "

"Then you will not yield? "

"No. "

"Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed? " His voice
rose.

"I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil. "

"Then you snatch love and innocence from me? You fling me back on lust
for a passion--vice for an occupation? "

"Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for
myself. We were born to strive and endure--you as well as I: do so. You
will forget me before I forget you. "

"You make me a liar by such language: you sully my honour. I declared I
could not change: you tell me to my face I shall change soon. And what a
distortion in your judgment, what a perversity in your ideas, is proved
by your conduct! Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than
to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach? for
you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend
by living with me? "

This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned
traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They
spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh,
comply! " it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger--look at his
state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the
recklessness following on despair--soothe him; save him; love him; tell
him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for _you_? or
who will be injured by what you do? "

Still indomitable was the reply--"_I_ care for myself. The more
solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will
respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I
will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not
mad--as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there
is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul
rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they
shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would
be their worth? They have a worth--so I have always believed; and if I
cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane--quite insane: with my
veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its
throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have
at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot. "

I did. Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so. His
fury was wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a moment,
whatever followed; he crossed the floor and seized my arm and grasped my
waist. He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance: physically, I
felt, at the moment, powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and glow
of a furnace: mentally, I still possessed my soul, and with it the
certainty of ultimate safety. The soul, fortunately, has an
interpreter--often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter--in
the eye. My eye rose to his; and while I looked in his fierce face I
gave an involuntary sigh; his gripe was painful, and my over-taxed
strength almost exhausted.

"Never," said he, as he ground his teeth, "never was anything at once so
frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand! " (And he
shook me with the force of his hold. ) "I could bend her with my finger
and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed
her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking
out of it, defying me, with more than courage--with a stern triumph.
Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it--the savage, beautiful
creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only
let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate
would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay
dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue
and purity--that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself you
could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would:
seized against your will, you will elude the grasp like an essence--you
will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh! come, Jane, come! "

As he said this, he released me from his clutch, and only looked at me.
The look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain: only an idiot,
however, would have succumbed now. I had dared and baffled his fury; I
must elude his sorrow: I retired to the door.

"You are going, Jane? "

"I am going, sir. "

"You are leaving me? "

"Yes. "

"You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My deep
love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you? "

What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard it was to reiterate
firmly, "I am going. "

"Jane!