No More Learning

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! "

"Mr. Rochester! "

"Withdraw, then,--I consent; but remember, you leave me here in anguish.
Go up to your own room; think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a
glance on my sufferings--think of me. "

He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. "Oh, Jane! my
hope--my love--my life! " broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a
deep, strong sob.

I had already gained the door; but, reader, I walked back--walked back as
determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him; I turned his face
from the cushion to me; I kissed his cheek; I smoothed his hair with my
hand.

"God bless you, my dear master! " I said. "God keep you from harm and
wrong--direct you, solace you--reward you well for your past kindness to
me. "

"Little Jane's love would have been my best reward," he answered;
"without it, my heart is broken. But Jane will give me her love:
yes--nobly, generously. "

Up the blood rushed to his face; forth flashed the fire from his eyes;
erect he sprang; he held his arms out; but I evaded the embrace, and at
once quitted the room.

"Farewell! " was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added,
"Farewell for ever! "

* * * * *

That night I never thought to sleep; but a slumber fell on me as soon as
I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the scenes of
childhood: I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead; that the night
was dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears. The light that long
ago had struck me into syncope, recalled in this vision, seemed glidingly
to mount the wall, and tremblingly to pause in the centre of the obscured
ceiling. I lifted up my head to look: the roof resolved to clouds, high
and dim; the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about
to sever. I watched her come--watched with the strangest anticipation;
as though some word of doom were to be written on her disk. She broke
forth as never moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the
sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon, but a white human form
shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and
gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone,
yet so near, it whispered in my heart--

"My daughter, flee temptation. "

"Mother, I will. "

So I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream. It was yet
night, but July nights are short: soon after midnight, dawn comes. "It
cannot be too early to commence the task I have to fulfil," thought I. I
rose: I was dressed; for I had taken off nothing but my shoes. I knew
where to find in my drawers some linen, a locket, a ring. In seeking
these articles, I encountered the beads of a pearl necklace Mr. Rochester
had forced me to accept a few days ago. I left that; it was not mine: it
was the visionary bride's who had melted in air. The other articles I
made up in a parcel; my purse, containing twenty shillings (it was all I
had), I put in my pocket: I tied on my straw bonnet, pinned my shawl,
took the parcel and my slippers, which I would not put on yet, and stole
from my room.

"Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax! " I whispered, as I glided past her door.
"Farewell, my darling Adele! " I said, as I glanced towards the nursery.
No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace her. I had to
deceive a fine ear: for aught I knew it might now be listening.

I would have got past Mr. Rochester's chamber without a pause; but my
heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced
to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was walking restlessly from
wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was
a heaven--a temporary heaven--in this room for me, if I chose: I had but
to go in and to say--

"Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till
death," and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought of
this.

That kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with impatience
for day. He would send for me in the morning; I should be gone. He
would have me sought for: vainly. He would feel himself forsaken; his
love rejected: he would suffer; perhaps grow desperate. I thought of
this too. My hand moved towards the lock: I caught it back, and glided
on.

Drearily I wound my way downstairs: I knew what I had to do, and I did it
mechanically. I sought the key of the side-door in the kitchen; I
sought, too, a phial of oil and a feather; I oiled the key and the lock.
I got some water, I got some bread: for perhaps I should have to walk
far; and my strength, sorely shaken of late, must not break down. All
this I did without one sound. I opened the door, passed out, shut it
softly. Dim dawn glimmered in the yard. The great gates were closed and
locked; but a wicket in one of them was only latched. Through that I
departed: it, too, I shut; and now I was out of Thornfield.

A mile off, beyond the fields, lay a road which stretched in the contrary
direction to Millcote; a road I had never travelled, but often noticed,
and wondered where it led: thither I bent my steps. No reflection was to
be allowed now: not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward.
Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The
first was a page so heavenly sweet--so deadly sad--that to read one line
of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was
an awful blank: something like the world when the deluge was gone by.

I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise. I believe it
was a lovely summer morning: I know my shoes, which I had put on when I
left the house, were soon wet with dew. But I looked neither to rising
sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature. He who is taken out to pass
through a fair scene to the scaffold, thinks not of the flowers that
smile on his road, but of the block and axe-edge; of the disseverment of
bone and vein; of the grave gaping at the end: and I thought of drear
flight and homeless wandering--and oh! with agony I thought of what I
left. I could not help it. I thought of him now--in his room--watching
the sunrise; hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him and
be his. I longed to be his; I panted to return: it was not too late; I
could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement. As yet my flight, I
was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and be his comforter--his
pride; his redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin. Oh, that fear of his
self-abandonment--far worse than my abandonment--how it goaded me! It
was a barbed arrow-head in my breast; it tore me when I tried to extract
it; it sickened me when remembrance thrust it farther in. Birds began
singing in brake and copse: birds were faithful to their mates; birds
were emblems of love. What was I? In the midst of my pain of heart and
frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I had no solace from
self-approbation: none even from self-respect. I had
injured--wounded--left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes. Still I
could not turn, nor retrace one step. God must have led me on. As to my
own will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled
the other. I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way: fast,
fast I went like one delirious. A weakness, beginning inwardly,
extending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell: I lay on the ground some
minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf. I had some fear--or hope--that
here I should die: but I was soon up; crawling forwards on my hands and
knees, and then again raised to my feet--as eager and as determined as
ever to reach the road.

When I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge; and
while I sat, I heard wheels, and saw a coach come on. I stood up and
lifted my hand; it stopped. I asked where it was going: the driver named
a place a long way off, and where I was sure Mr. Rochester had no
connections. I asked for what sum he would take me there; he said thirty
shillings; I answered I had but twenty; well, he would try to make it do.
He further gave me leave to get into the inside, as the vehicle was
empty: I entered, was shut in, and it rolled on its way.

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never
shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May
you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in
that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the
instrument of evil to what you wholly love.




CHAPTER XXVIII


Two days are passed. It is a summer evening; the coachman has set me
down at a place called Whitcross; he could take me no farther for the sum
I had given, and I was not possessed of another shilling in the world.
The coach is a mile off by this time; I am alone. At this moment I
discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the pocket of the coach,
where I had placed it for safety; there it remains, there it must remain;
and now, I am absolutely destitute.

Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet; it is but a stone pillar set up
where four roads meet: whitewashed, I suppose, to be more obvious at a
distance and in darkness. Four arms spring from its summit: the nearest
town to which these point is, according to the inscription, distant ten
miles; the farthest, above twenty. From the well-known names of these
towns I learn in what county I have lighted; a north-midland shire, dusk
with moorland, ridged with mountain: this I see. There are great moors
behind and on each hand of me; there are waves of mountains far beyond
that deep valley at my feet. The population here must be thin, and I see
no passengers on these roads: they stretch out east, west, north, and
south--white, broad, lonely; they are all cut in the moor, and the
heather grows deep and wild to their very verge. Yet a chance traveller
might pass by; and I wish no eye to see me now: strangers would wonder
what I am doing, lingering here at the sign-post, evidently objectless
and lost. I might be questioned: I could give no answer but what would
sound incredible and excite suspicion. Not a tie holds me to human
society at this moment--not a charm or hope calls me where my
fellow-creatures are--none that saw me would have a kind thought or a
good wish for me. I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature: I
will seek her breast and ask repose.

I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply
furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I
turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a
hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of moor were about me; the
crag protected my head: the sky was over that.

Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here: I had a vague dread
that wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or poacher might
discover me. If a gust of wind swept the waste, I looked up, fearing it
was the rush of a bull; if a plover whistled, I imagined it a man.
Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however, and calmed by the deep
silence that reigned as evening declined at nightfall, I took confidence.
As yet I had not thought; I had only listened, watched, dreaded; now I
regained the faculty of reflection.

What was I to do? Where to go? Oh, intolerable questions, when I could
do nothing and go nowhere! --when a long way must yet be measured by my
weary, trembling limbs before I could reach human habitation--when cold
charity must be entreated before I could get a lodging: reluctant
sympathy importuned, almost certain repulse incurred, before my tale
could be listened to, or one of my wants relieved!

I touched the heath: it was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the summer
day. I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above
the chasm ridge. The dew fell, but with propitious softness; no breeze
whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me,
outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust,
rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness. To-night, at
least, I would be her guest, as I was her child: my mother would lodge me
without money and without price. I had one morsel of bread yet: the
remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed through at noon with a
stray penny--my last coin. I saw ripe bilberries gleaming here and
there, like jet beads in the heath: I gathered a handful and ate them
with the bread. My hunger, sharp before, was, if not satisfied, appeased
by this hermit's meal. I said my evening prayers at its conclusion, and
then chose my couch.

{I said my evening prayers: p311. jpg}

Beside the crag the heath was very deep: when I lay down my feet were
buried in it; rising high on each side, it left only a narrow space for
the night-air to invade. I folded my shawl double, and spread it over me
for a coverlet; a low, mossy swell was my pillow. Thus lodged, I was
not, at least--at the commencement of the night, cold.

My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. It
plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven chords. It
trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom; it bemoaned him with bitter
pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing; and, impotent as a bird
with both wings broken, it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain
attempts to seek him.