No More Learning

With me,
then, it seems, you cannot go: but if you are sincere in your offer, I
will, while in town, speak to a married missionary, whose wife needs a
coadjutor. Your own fortune will make you independent of the Society's
aid; and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your
promise and deserting the band you engaged to join. "

Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise or
entered into any engagement; and this language was all much too hard and
much too despotic for the occasion. I replied--

"There is no dishonour, no breach of promise, no desertion in the case. I
am not under the slightest obligation to go to India, especially with
strangers. With you I would have ventured much, because I admire,
confide in, and, as a sister, I love you; but I am convinced that, go
when and with whom I would, I should not live long in that climate. "

"Ah! you are afraid of yourself," he said, curling his lip.

"I am. God did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as you wish
me would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing suicide.
Moreover, before I definitively resolve on quitting England, I will know
for certain whether I cannot be of greater use by remaining in it than by
leaving it. "

"What do you mean? "

"It would be fruitless to attempt to explain; but there is a point on
which I have long endured painful doubt, and I can go nowhere till by
some means that doubt is removed. "

"I know where your heart turns and to what it clings. The interest you
cherish is lawless and unconsecrated. Long since you ought to have
crushed it: now you should blush to allude to it. You think of Mr.
Rochester? "

It was true. I confessed it by silence.

"Are you going to seek Mr. Rochester? "

"I must find out what is become of him. "

"It remains for me, then," he said, "to remember you in my prayers, and
to entreat God for you, in all earnestness, that you may not indeed
become a castaway. I had thought I recognised in you one of the chosen.
But God sees not as man sees: _His_ will be done--"

He opened the gate, passed through it, and strayed away down the glen. He
was soon out of sight.

On re-entering the parlour, I found Diana standing at the window, looking
very thoughtful. Diana was a great deal taller than I: she put her hand
on my shoulder, and, stooping, examined my face.

"Jane," she said, "you are always agitated and pale now. I am sure there
is something the matter. Tell me what business St. John and you have on
hands. I have watched you this half hour from the window; you must
forgive my being such a spy, but for a long time I have fancied I hardly
know what. St. John is a strange being--"

She paused--I did not speak: soon she resumed--

"That brother of mine cherishes peculiar views of some sort respecting
you, I am sure: he has long distinguished you by a notice and interest he
never showed to any one else--to what end? I wish he loved you--does he,
Jane? "

I put her cool hand to my hot forehead; "No, Die, not one whit. "

"Then why does he follow you so with his eyes, and get you so frequently
alone with him, and keep you so continually at his side? Mary and I had
both concluded he wished you to marry him. "

"He does--he has asked me to be his wife. "

Diana clapped her hands. "That is just what we hoped and thought! And
you will marry him, Jane, won't you? And then he will stay in England. "

"Far from that, Diana; his sole idea in proposing to me is to procure a
fitting fellow-labourer in his Indian toils. "

"What! He wishes you to go to India? "

"Yes. "

"Madness! " she exclaimed. "You would not live three months there, I am
certain. You never shall go: you have not consented, have you, Jane? "

"I have refused to marry him--"

"And have consequently displeased him? " she suggested.

"Deeply: he will never forgive me, I fear: yet I offered to accompany him
as his sister. "

"It was frantic folly to do so, Jane. Think of the task you
undertook--one of incessant fatigue, where fatigue kills even the strong,
and you are weak. St. John--you know him--would urge you to
impossibilities: with him there would be no permission to rest during the
hot hours; and unfortunately, I have noticed, whatever he exacts, you
force yourself to perform. I am astonished you found courage to refuse
his hand. You do not love him then, Jane? "

"Not as a husband. "

"Yet he is a handsome fellow. "

"And I am so plain, you see, Die. We should never suit. "

"Plain! You? Not at all. You are much too pretty, as well as too good,
to be grilled alive in Calcutta. " And again she earnestly conjured me to
give up all thoughts of going out with her brother.

"I must indeed," I said; "for when just now I repeated the offer of
serving him for a deacon, he expressed himself shocked at my want of
decency. He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety in proposing
to accompany him unmarried: as if I had not from the first hoped to find
in him a brother, and habitually regarded him as such. "

"What makes you say he does not love you, Jane? "

"You should hear himself on the subject. He has again and again
explained that it is not himself, but his office he wishes to mate. He
has told me I am formed for labour--not for love: which is true, no
doubt. But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, it follows that
I am not formed for marriage. Would it not be strange, Die, to be
chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool? "

"Insupportable--unnatural--out of the question! "

"And then," I continued, "though I have only sisterly affection for him
now, yet, if forced to be his wife, I can imagine the possibility of
conceiving an inevitable, strange, torturing kind of love for him,
because he is so talented; and there is often a certain heroic grandeur
in his look, manner, and conversation. In that case, my lot would become
unspeakably wretched. He would not want me to love him; and if I showed
the feeling, he would make me sensible that it was a superfluity,
unrequired by him, unbecoming in me. I know he would. "

"And yet St. John is a good man," said Diana.

"He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings
and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views. It is
better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way, lest, in
his progress, he should trample them down. Here he comes! I will leave
you, Diana. " And I hastened upstairs as I saw him entering the garden.

But I was forced to meet him again at supper. During that meal he
appeared just as composed as usual. I had thought he would hardly speak
to me, and I was certain he had given up the pursuit of his matrimonial
scheme: the sequel showed I was mistaken on both points. He addressed me
precisely in his ordinary manner, or what had, of late, been his ordinary
manner--one scrupulously polite. No doubt he had invoked the help of the
Holy Spirit to subdue the anger I had roused in him, and now believed he
had forgiven me once more.

For the evening reading before prayers, he selected the twenty-first
chapter of Revelation. It was at all times pleasant to listen while from
his lips fell the words of the Bible: never did his fine voice sound at
once so sweet and full--never did his manner become so impressive in its
noble simplicity, as when he delivered the oracles of God: and to-night
that voice took a more solemn tone--that manner a more thrilling
meaning--as he sat in the midst of his household circle (the May moon
shining in through the uncurtained window, and rendering almost
unnecessary the light of the candle on the table): as he sat there,
bending over the great old Bible, and described from its page the vision
of the new heaven and the new earth--told how God would come to dwell
with men, how He would wipe away all tears from their eyes, and promised
that there should be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any
more pain, because the former things were passed away.

The succeeding words thrilled me strangely as he spoke them: especially
as I felt, by the slight, indescribable alteration in sound, that in
uttering them, his eye had turned on me.

"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and
he shall be my son. But," was slowly, distinctly read, "the fearful, the
unbelieving, &c. , shall have their part in the lake which burneth with
fire and brimstone, which is the second death. "

Henceforward, I knew what fate St. John feared for me.

A calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earnestness, marked his
enunciation of the last glorious verses of that chapter. The reader
believed his name was already written in the Lamb's book of life, and he
yearned after the hour which should admit him to the city to which the
kings of the earth bring their glory and honour; which has no need of sun
or moon to shine in it, because the glory of God lightens it, and the
Lamb is the light thereof.

In the prayer following the chapter, all his energy gathered--all his
stern zeal woke: he was in deep earnest, wrestling with God, and resolved
on a conquest. He supplicated strength for the weak-hearted; guidance
for wanderers from the fold: a return, even at the eleventh hour, for
those whom the temptations of the world and the flesh were luring from
the narrow path. He asked, he urged, he claimed the boon of a brand
snatched from the burning. Earnestness is ever deeply solemn: first, as
I listened to that prayer, I wondered at his; then, when it continued and
rose, I was touched by it, and at last awed. He felt the greatness and
goodness of his purpose so sincerely: others who heard him plead for it,
could not but feel it too.

The prayer over, we took leave of him: he was to go at a very early hour
in the morning. Diana and Mary having kissed him, left the room--in
compliance, I think, with a whispered hint from him: I tendered my hand,
and wished him a pleasant journey.

"Thank you, Jane. As I said, I shall return from Cambridge in a
fortnight: that space, then, is yet left you for reflection. If I
listened to human pride, I should say no more to you of marriage with me;
but I listen to my duty, and keep steadily in view my first aim--to do
all things to the glory of God. My Master was long-suffering: so will I
be. I cannot give you up to perdition as a vessel of wrath:
repent--resolve, while there is yet time. Remember, we are bid to work
while it is day--warned that 'the night cometh when no man shall work. '
Remember the fate of Dives, who had his good things in this life. God
give you strength to choose that better part which shall not be taken
from you! "

He laid his hand on my head as he uttered the last words. He had spoken
earnestly, mildly: his look was not, indeed, that of a lover beholding
his mistress, but it was that of a pastor recalling his wandering
sheep--or better, of a guardian angel watching the soul for which he is
responsible. All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not;
whether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots--provided only they be
sincere--have their sublime moments, when they subdue and rule. I felt
veneration for St. John--veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me
at once to the point I had so long shunned. I was tempted to cease
struggling with him--to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf
of his existence, and there lose my own. I was almost as hard beset by
him now as I had been once before, in a different way, by another. I was
a fool both times. To have yielded then would have been an error of
principle; to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment. So
I think at this hour, when I look back to the crisis through the quiet
medium of time: I was unconscious of folly at the instant.

I stood motionless under my hierophant's touch. My refusals were
forgotten--my fears overcome--my wrestlings paralysed. The
Impossible--_i. e. _, my marriage with St. John--was fast becoming the
Possible. All was changing utterly with a sudden sweep. Religion
called--Angels beckoned--God commanded--life rolled together like a
scroll--death's gates opening, showed eternity beyond: it seemed, that
for safety and bliss there, all here might be sacrificed in a second. The
dim room was full of visions.

"Could you decide now? " asked the missionary. The inquiry was put in
gentle tones: he drew me to him as gently. Oh, that gentleness! how far
more potent is it than force! I could resist St. John's wrath: I grew
pliant as a reed under his kindness. Yet I knew all the time, if I
yielded now, I should not the less be made to repent, some day, of my
former rebellion. His nature was not changed by one hour of solemn
prayer: it was only elevated.

"I could decide if I were but certain," I answered: "were I but convinced
that it is God's will I should marry you, I could vow to marry you here
and now--come afterwards what would! "

"My prayers are heard! " ejaculated St. John. He pressed his hand firmer
on my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm, _almost_
as if he loved me (I say _almost_--I knew the difference--for I had felt
what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now put love out of the
question, and thought only of duty). I contended with my inward dimness
of vision, before which clouds yet rolled. I sincerely, deeply,
fervently longed to do what was right; and only that. "Show me, show me
the path! " I entreated of Heaven. I was excited more than I had ever
been; and whether what followed was the effect of excitement the reader
shall judge.

All the house was still; for I believe all, except St. John and myself,
were now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out: the room was
full of moonlight. My heart beat fast and thick: I heard its throb.
Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it
through, and passed at once to my head and extremities. The feeling was
not like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as
startling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had
been but torpor, from which they were now summoned and forced to wake.
They rose expectant: eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my
bones.

"What have you heard? What do you see? " asked St. John. I saw nothing,
but I heard a voice somewhere cry--

"Jane! Jane! Jane! "--nothing more.

"O God! what is it? " I gasped.

I might have said, "Where is it? " for it did not seem in the room--nor in
the house--nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air--nor from
under the earth--nor from overhead. I had heard it--where, or whence,
for ever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being--a
known, loved, well-remembered voice--that of Edward Fairfax Rochester;
and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.

"I am coming! " I cried. "Wait for me! Oh, I will come! " I flew to the
door and looked into the passage: it was dark. I ran out into the
garden: it was void.

"Where are you? " I exclaimed.

The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back--"Where are
you? " I listened. The wind sighed low in the firs: all was moorland
loneliness and midnight hush.

"Down superstition! " I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the
black yew at the gate. "This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft:
it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did--no miracle--but her
best. "

I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained me. It
was _my_ time to assume ascendency. _My_ powers were in play and in
force.
I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to leave
me: I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once. Where there is energy
to command well enough, obedience never fails. I mounted to my chamber;
locked myself in; fell on my knees; and prayed in my way--a different way
to St. John's, but effective in its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate
very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His
feet. I rose from the thanksgiving--took a resolve--and lay down,
unscared, enlightened--eager but for the daylight.




CHAPTER XXXVI


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 well-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.