prompt:
Chapter: Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and seeing
the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I asked,
"What am I to do?"

But the answer my mind gave--"Leave Thornfield at once"--was so prompt,
so dread, that I stopped my ears.  I said I could not bear such words
now.  "That I am not Edward Rochester's bride is the least part of my
woe," I alleged: "that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and
found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master; but
that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable.  I
cannot do it."

But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold that
I should do it.  I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak
that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out
for me; and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the throat, told
her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and
swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded
depths of agony.

"Let me be torn away," then I cried.  "Let another help me!"

"No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall
yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand: your
heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it."

I rose up suddenly, terror-struck at the solitude which so ruthless a
judge haunted,--at the silence which so awful a voice filled.  My head
swam as I stood erect.  I perceived that I was sickening from excitement
and inanition; neither meat nor drink had passed my lips that day, for I
had taken no breakfast.  And, with a strange pang, I now reflected that,
long as I had been shut up here, no message had been sent to ask how I
was, or to invite me to come down: not even little Adele had tapped at
the door; not even Mrs. Fairfax had sought me.  "Friends always forget
those whom fortune forsakes," I murmured, as I undrew the bolt and passed
out.  I stumbled over an obstacle: my head was still dizzy, my sight was
dim, and my limbs were feeble.  I could not soon recover myself.  I fell,
but not on to the ground: an outstretched arm caught me.  I looked up--I
was supported by Mr. Rochester, who sat in a chair across my chamber
threshold.

"You come out at last," he said.  "Well, I have been waiting for you
long, and listening: yet not one movement have I heard, nor one sob: five
minutes more of that death-like hush, and I should have forced the lock
like a burglar.  So you shun me?--you shut yourself up and grieve alone!
I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence.  You are
passionate.  I expected a scene of some kind.  I was prepared for the hot
rain of tears; only I wanted them to be shed on my breast: now a
senseless floor has received them, or your drenched handkerchief.  But I
err: you have not wept at all!  I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but
no trace of tears.  I suppose, then, your heart has been weeping blood?"

"Well, Jane! not a word of reproach?  Nothing bitter--nothing poignant?
Nothing to cut a feeling or sting a passion?  You sit quietly where I
have placed you, and regard me with a weary, passive look."

"Jane, I never meant to wound you thus.  If the man who had but one
little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread
and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake
slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder
more than I now rue mine.  Will you ever forgive me?"

Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot.  There was such deep
remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly energy in his
manner; and besides, there was such unchanged love in his whole look and
mien--I forgave him all: yet not in words, not outwardly; only at my
heart's core.

"You know I am a scoundrel, Jane?" ere long he inquired
wistfully--wondering, I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness,
the result rather of weakness than of will.

"Yes, sir."

"Then tell me so roundly and sharply--don't spare me."

"I cannot: I am tired and sick.  I want some water."  He heaved a sort of
shuddering sigh, and taking me in his arms, carried me downstairs.  At
first I did not know to what room he had borne me; all was cloudy to my
glazed sight: presently I felt the reviving warmth of a fire; for, summer
as it was, I had become icy cold in my chamber.  He put wine to my lips;
I tasted it and revived; then I ate something he offered me, and was soon
myself.  I was in the library--sitting in his chair--he was quite near.
"If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be
well for me," I thought; "then I should not have to make the effort of
cracking my heart-strings in rending them from among Mr. Rochester's.  I
must leave him, it appears.  I do not want to leave him--I cannot leave
him."

"How are you now, Jane?"

"Much better, sir; I shall be well soon."

"Taste the wine again, Jane."

I obeyed him; then he put the glass on the table, stood before me, and
looked at me attentively.  Suddenly he turned away, with an inarticulate
exclamation, full of passionate emotion of some kind; he walked fast
through the room and came back; he stooped towards me as if to kiss me;
but I remembered caresses were now forbidden.  I turned my face away and
put his aside.

"What!--How is this?" he exclaimed hastily.  "Oh, I know! you won't kiss
the husband of Bertha Mason?  You consider my arms filled and my embraces
appropriated?"

"At any rate, there is neither room nor claim for me, sir."

"Why, Jane?  I will spare you the trouble of much talking; I will answer
for you--Because I have a wife already, you would reply.--I guess
rightly?"

"Yes."

"If you think so, you must have a strange opinion of me; you must regard
me as a plotting profligate--a base and low rake who has been simulating
disinterested love in order to draw you into a snare deliberately laid,
and strip you of honour and rob you of self-respect.  What do you say to
that?  I see you can say nothing in the first place, you are faint still,
and have enough to do to draw your breath; in the second place, you
cannot yet accustom yourself to accuse and revile me, and besides, the
flood-gates of tears are opened, and they would rush out if you spoke
much; and you have no desire to expostulate, to upbraid, to make a scene:
you are thinking how _to act_--_talking_ you consider is of no use.  I
know you--I am on my guard."

"Sir, I do not wish to act against you," I said; and my unsteady voice
warned me to curtail my sentence.

"Not in your sense of the word, but in mine you are scheming to destroy
me.  You have as good as said that I am a married man--as a married man
you will shun me, keep out of my way: just now you have refused to kiss
me.  You intend to make yourself a complete stranger to me: to live under
this roof only as Adele's governess; if ever I say a friendly word to
you, if ever a friendly feeling inclines you again to me, you will
say,--'That man had nearly made me his mistress: I must be ice and rock
to him;' and ice and rock you will accordingly become."

I cleared and steadied my voice to reply: "All is changed about me, sir;
I must change too--there is no doubt of that; and to avoid fluctuations
of feeling, and continual combats with recollections and associations,
there is only one way--Adele must have a new governess, sir."

"Oh, Adele will go to school--I have settled that already; nor do I mean
to torment you with the hideous associations and recollections of
Thornfield Hall--this accursed place--this tent of Achan--this insolent
vault, offering the ghastliness of living death to the light of the open
sky--this narrow stone hell, with its one real fiend, worse than a legion
of such as we imagine.  Jane, you shall not stay here, nor will I.  I was
wrong ever to bring you to Thornfield Hall, knowing as I did how it was
haunted.  I charged them to conceal from you, before I ever saw you, all
knowledge of the curse of the place; merely because I feared Adele never
would have a governess to stay if she knew with what inmate she was
housed, and my plans would not permit me to remove the maniac
elsewhere--though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more
retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely
enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in
the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement.
Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge: but to
each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect
assassination, even of what I most hate.

"Concealing the mad-woman's neighbourhood from you, however, was
something like covering a child with a cloak and laying it down near a
upas-tree: that demon's vicinage is poisoned, and always was.  But I'll
shut up Thornfield Hall: I'll nail up the front door and board the lower
windows: I'll give Mrs. Poole two hundred a year to live here with _my
wife_, as you term that fearful hag: Grace will do much for money, and
she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby Retreat, to bear her
company and be at hand to give her aid in the paroxysms, when _my wife_
is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night, to
stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on--"

"Sir," I interrupted him, "you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady:
you speak of her with hate--with vindictive antipathy.  It is cruel--she
cannot help being mad."

"Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don't
know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because
she is mad I hate her.  If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?"

"I do indeed, sir."

"Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about
the sort of love of which I am capable.  Every atom of your flesh is as
dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.  Your
mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure
still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait
waistcoat--your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you
flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you
in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive.  I should not
shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you
should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you
with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and
never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of
recognition for me.--But why do I follow that train of ideas?  I was
talking of removing you from Thornfield.  All, you know, is prepared for
prompt departure: to-morrow you shall go.  I only ask you to endure one
more night under this roof, Jane; and then, farewell to its miseries and
terrors for ever!  I have a place to repair to, which will be a secure
sanctuary from hateful reminiscences, from unwelcome intrusion--even from
falsehood and slander."

"And take Adele with you, sir," I interrupted; "she will be a companion
for you."

"What do you mean, Jane?  I told you I would send Adele to school; and
what do I want with a child for a companion, and not my own child,--a
French dancer's bastard?  Why do you importune me about her!  I say, why
do you assign Adele to me for a companion?"

"You spoke of a retirement, sir; and retirement and solitude are dull:
too dull for you."

"Solitude! solitude!" he reiterated with irritation.  "I see I must come
to an explanation.  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!"

"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.

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.

Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees.  Night was
come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the
companionship of fear.  We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we
feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread
before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel
their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His
omnipotence, His omnipresence.  I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr.
Rochester.  Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky-
way.  Remembering what it was--what countless systems there swept space
like a soft trace of light--I felt the might and strength of God.  Sure
was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that
neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured.  I turned
my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of
spirits.  Mr. Rochester was safe; he was God's, and by God would he be
guarded.  I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long in
sleep forgot sorrow.

But next day, Want came to me pale and bare.  Long after the little birds
had left their nests; long after bees had come in the sweet prime of day
to gather the heath honey before the dew was dried--when the long morning
shadows were curtailed, and the sun filled earth and sky--I got up, and I
looked round me.

What a still, hot, perfect day!  What a golden desert this spreading
moor!  Everywhere sunshine.  I wished I could live in it and on it.  I
saw a lizard run over the crag; I saw a bee busy among the sweet
bilberries.  I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard, that I
might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter here.  But I was a
human being, and had a human being's wants: I must not linger where there
was nothing to supply them.  I rose; I looked back at the bed I had left.
Hopeless of the future, I wished but this--that my Maker had that night
thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that this weary
frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to
decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness.
Life, however, was yet in my possession, with all its requirements, and
pains, and responsibilities.  The burden must be carried; the want
provided for; the suffering endured; the responsibility fulfilled.  I set
out.

Whitcross regained, I followed a road which led from the sun, now fervent
and high.  By no other circumstance had I will to decide my choice.  I
walked a long time, and when I thought I had nearly done enough, and
might conscientiously yield to the fatigue that almost overpowered
me--might relax this forced action, and, sitting down on a stone I saw
near, submit resistlessly to the apathy that clogged heart and limb--I
heard a bell chime--a church bell.

I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the romantic
hills, whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago, I saw a
hamlet and a spire.  All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture-
fields, and cornfields, and wood; and a glittering stream ran zig-zag
through the varied shades of green, the mellowing grain, the sombre
woodland, the clear and sunny lea.  Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to
the road before me, I saw a heavily-laden waggon labouring up the hill,
and not far beyond were two cows and their drover.  Human life and human
labour were near.  I must struggle on: strive to live and bend to toil
like the rest.

About two o'clock p.m. I entered the village.  At the bottom of its one
street there was a little shop with some cakes of bread in the window.  I
coveted a cake of bread.  With that refreshment I could perhaps regain a
degree of energy: without it, it would be difficult to proceed.  The wish
to have some strength and some vigour returned to me as soon as I was
amongst my fellow-beings.  I felt it would be degrading to faint with
hunger on the causeway of a hamlet.  Had I nothing about me I could offer
in exchange for one of these rolls?  I considered.  I had a small silk
handkerchief tied round my throat; I had my gloves.  I could hardly tell
how men and women in extremities of destitution proceeded.  I did not
know whether either of these articles would be accepted: probably they
would not; but I must try.

I entered the shop: a woman was there.  Seeing a respectably-dressed
person, a lady as she supposed, she came forward with civility.  How
could she serve me?  I was seized with shame: my tongue would not utter
the request I had prepared.  I dared not offer her the half-worn gloves,
the creased handkerchief: besides, I felt it would be absurd.  I only
begged permission to sit down a moment, as I was tired.  Disappointed in
the expectation of a customer, she coolly acceded to my request.  She
pointed to a seat; I sank into it.  I felt sorely urged to weep; but
conscious how unseasonable such a manifestation would be, I restrained
it.  Soon I asked her "if there were any dressmaker or plain-workwoman in
the village?"

"Yes; two or three.  Quite as many as there was employment for."

I reflected.  I was driven to the point now.  I was brought face to face
with Necessity.  I stood in the position of one without a resource,
without a friend, without a coin.  I must do something.  What?  I must
apply somewhere.  Where?

"Did she know of any place in the neighbourhood where a servant was
wanted?"

"Nay; she couldn't say."

"What was the chief trade in this place?  What did most of the people
do?"

"Some were farm labourers; a good deal worked at Mr. Oliver's
needle-factory, and at the foundry."

"Did Mr. Oliver employ women?"

"Nay; it was men's work."

"And what do the women do?"

"I knawn't," was the answer.  "Some does one thing, and some another.
Poor folk mun get on as they can."

She seemed to be tired of my questions: and, indeed, what claim had I to
importune her?  A neighbour or two came in; my chair was evidently
wanted.  I took leave.

I passed up the street, looking as I went at all the houses to the right
hand and to the left; but I could discover no pretext, nor see an
inducement to enter any.  I rambled round the hamlet, going sometimes to
a little distance and returning again, for an hour or more.  Much
exhausted, and suffering greatly now for want of food, I turned aside
into a lane and sat down under the hedge.  Ere many minutes had elapsed,
I was again on my feet, however, and again searching something--a
resource, or at least an informant.  A pretty little house stood at the
top of the lane, with a garden before it, exquisitely neat and
brilliantly blooming.  I stopped at it.  What business had I to approach
the white door or touch the glittering knocker?  In what way could it
possibly be the interest of the inhabitants of that dwelling to serve me?
Yet I drew near and knocked.  A mild-looking, cleanly-attired young woman
opened the door.  In such a voice as might be expected from a hopeless
heart and fainting frame--a voice wretchedly low and faltering--I asked
if a servant was wanted here?

"No," said she; "we do not keep a servant."

"Can you tell me where I could get employment of any kind?" I continued.
"I am a stranger, without acquaintance in this place.  I want some work:
no matter what."

But it was not her business to think for me, or to seek a place for me:
besides, in her eyes, how doubtful must have appeared my character,
position, tale.  She shook her head, she "was sorry she could give me no
information," and the white door closed, quite gently and civilly: but it
shut me out.  If she had held it open a little longer, I believe I should
have begged a piece of bread; for I was now brought low.

I could not bear to return to the sordid village, where, besides, no
prospect of aid was visible.  I should have longed rather to deviate to a
wood I saw not far off, which appeared in its thick shade to offer
inviting shelter; but I was so sick, so weak, so gnawed with nature's
cravings, instinct kept me roaming round abodes where there was a chance
of food.  Solitude would be no solitude--rest no rest--while the vulture,
hunger, thus sank beak and talons in my side.

I drew near houses; I left them, and came back again, and again I
wandered away: always repelled by the consciousness of having no claim to
ask--no right to expect interest in my isolated lot.  Meantime, the
afternoon advanced, while I thus wandered about like a lost and starving
dog.  In crossing a field, I saw the church spire before me: I hastened
towards it.  Near the churchyard, and in the middle of a garden, stood a
well-built though small house, which I had no doubt was the parsonage.  I
remembered that strangers who arrive at a place where they have no
friends, and who want employment, sometimes apply to the clergyman for
introduction and aid.  It is the clergyman's function to help--at least
with advice--those who wished to help themselves.  I seemed to have
something like a right to seek counsel here.  Renewing then my courage,
and gathering my feeble remains of strength, I pushed on.  I reached the
house, and knocked at the kitchen-door.  An old woman opened: I asked was
this the parsonage?

"Yes."

"Was the clergyman in?"

"No."

"Would he be in soon?"

"No, he was gone from home."

"To a distance?"

"Not so far--happen three mile.  He had been called away by the sudden
death of his father: he was at Marsh End now, and would very likely stay
there a fortnight longer."

"Was there any lady of the house?"

"Nay, there was naught but her, and she was housekeeper;" and of her,
reader, I could not bear to ask the relief for want of which I was
sinking; I could not yet beg; and again I crawled away.

Once more I took off my handkerchief--once more I thought of the cakes of
bread in the little shop.  Oh, for but a crust! for but one mouthful to
allay the pang of famine!  Instinctively I turned my face again to the
village; I found the shop again, and I went in; and though others were
there besides the woman I ventured the request--"Would she give me a roll
for this handkerchief?"

She looked at me with evident suspicion: "Nay, she never sold stuff i'
that way."

Almost desperate, I asked for half a cake; she again refused.  "How could
she tell where I had got the handkerchief?" she said.

"Would she take my gloves?"

"No! what could she do with them?"

Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details.  Some say there is
enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I
can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral
degradation, blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a
recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on.  I blamed none of those who
repulsed me.  I felt it was what was to be expected, and what could not
be helped: an ordinary beggar is frequently an object of suspicion; a
well-dressed beggar inevitably so.  To be sure, what I begged was
employment; but whose business was it to provide me with employment?  Not,
certainly, that of persons who saw me then for the first time, and who
knew nothing about my character.  And as to the woman who would not take
my handkerchief in exchange for her bread, why, she was right, if the
offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable.  Let me
condense now.  I am sick of the subject.

A little before dark I passed a farm-house, at the open door of which the
farmer was sitting, eating his supper of bread and cheese.  I stopped and
said--

"Will you give me a piece of bread? for I am very hungry."  He cast on me
a glance of surprise; but without answering, he cut a thick slice from
his loaf, and gave it to me.  I imagine he did not think I was a beggar,
but only an eccentric sort of lady, who had taken a fancy to his brown
loaf.  As soon as I was out of sight of his house, I sat down and ate it.

I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sought it in the wood
I have before alluded to.  But my night was wretched, my rest broken: the
ground was damp, the air cold: besides, intruders passed near me more
than once, and I had again and again to change my quarters; no sense of
safety or tranquillity befriended me.  Towards morning it rained; the
whole of the following day was wet.  Do not ask me, reader, to give a
minute account of that day; as before, I sought work; as before, I was
repulsed; as before, I starved; but once did food pass my lips.  At the
door of a cottage I saw a little girl about to throw a mess of cold
porridge into a pig trough.  "Will you give me that?" I asked.

{"Will you give me that?"  I asked: p316.jpg}

She stared at me.  "Mother!" she exclaimed, "there is a woman wants me to
give her these porridge."

"Well lass," replied a voice within, "give it her if she's a beggar.  T'
pig doesn't want it."

The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it
ravenously.

As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridle-path, which
I had been pursuing an hour or more.

"My strength is quite failing me," I said in a soliloquy.  "I feel I
cannot go much farther.  Shall I be an outcast again this night?  While
the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched ground?  I
fear I cannot do otherwise: for who will receive me?  But it will be very
dreadful, with this feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this sense
of desolation--this total prostration of hope.  In all likelihood,
though, I should die before morning.  And why cannot I reconcile myself
to the prospect of death?  Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life?
Because I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester is living: and then, to die of
want and cold is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively.  Oh,
Providence! sustain me a little longer!  Aid!--direct me!"

My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape.  I saw I had
strayed far from the village: it was quite out of sight.  The very
cultivation surrounding it had disappeared.  I had, by cross-ways and by-
paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland; and now, only a few
fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the heath from which they were
scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and the dusky hill.

"Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented
road," I reflected.  "And far better that crows and ravens--if any ravens
there be in these regions--should pick my flesh from my bones, than that
they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper's
grave."

To the hill, then, I turned.  I reached it.  It remained now only to find
a hollow where I could lie down, and feel at least hidden, if not secure.
But all the surface of the waste looked level.  It showed no variation
but of tint: green, where rush and moss overgrew the marshes; black,
where the dry soil bore only heath.  Dark as it was getting, I could
still see these changes, though but as mere alternations of light and
shade; for colour had faded with the daylight.

My eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the moor-edge,
vanishing amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in among
the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up.  "That is an _ignis
fatuus_," was my first thought; and I expected it would soon vanish.  It
burnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding nor advancing.  "Is
it, then, a bonfire just kindled?" I questioned.  I watched to see
whether it would spread: but no; as it did not diminish, so it did not
enlarge.  "It may be a candle in a house," I then conjectured; "but if
so, I can never reach it.  It is much too far away: and were it within a
yard of me, what would it avail?  I should but knock at the door to have
it shut in my face."

And I sank down where I stood, and hid my face against the ground.  I lay
still a while: the night-wind swept over the hill and over me, and died
moaning in the distance; the rain fell fast, wetting me afresh to the
skin.  Could I but have stiffened to the still frost--the friendly
numbness of death--it might have pelted on; I should not have felt it;
but my yet living flesh shuddered at its chilling influence.  I rose ere
long.

The light was yet there, shining dim but constant through the rain.  I
tried to walk again: I dragged my exhausted limbs slowly towards it.  It
led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog, which would have been
impassable in winter, and was splashy and shaking even now, in the height
of summer.  Here I fell twice; but as often I rose and rallied my
faculties.  This light was my forlorn hope: I must gain it.

Having crossed the marsh, I saw a trace of white over the moor.  I
approached it; it was a road or a track: it led straight up to the light,
which now beamed from a sort of knoll, amidst a clump of trees--firs,
apparently, from what I could distinguish of the character of their forms
and foliage through the gloom.  My star vanished as I drew near: some
obstacle had intervened between me and it.  I put out my hand to feel the
dark mass before me: I discriminated the rough stones of a low wall--above
it, something like palisades, and within, a high and prickly hedge.  I
groped on.  Again a whitish object gleamed before me: it was a gate--a
wicket; it moved on its hinges as I touched it.  On each side stood a
sable bush-holly or yew.

Entering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house rose
to view, black, low, and rather long; but the guiding light shone
nowhere.  All was obscurity.  Were the inmates retired to rest?  I feared
it must be so.  In seeking the door, I turned an angle: there shot out
the friendly gleam again, from the lozenged panes of a very small
latticed window, within a foot of the ground, made still smaller by the
growth of ivy or some other creeping plant, whose leaves clustered thick
over the portion of the house wall in which it was set.  The aperture was
so screened and narrow, that curtain or shutter had been deemed
unnecessary; and when I stooped down and put aside the spray of foliage
shooting over it, I could see all within.  I could see clearly a room
with a sanded floor, clean scoured; a dresser of walnut, with pewter
plates ranged in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a glowing
peat-fire.  I could see a clock, a white deal table, some chairs.  The
candle, whose ray had been my beacon, burnt on the table; and by its
light an elderly woman, somewhat rough-looking, but scrupulously clean,
like all about her, was knitting a stocking.

I noticed these objects cursorily only--in them there was nothing
extraordinary.  A group of more interest appeared near the hearth,
sitting still amidst the rosy peace and warmth suffusing it.  Two young,
graceful women--ladies in every point--sat, one in a low rocking-chair,
the other on a lower stool; both wore deep mourning of crape and
bombazeen, which sombre garb singularly set off very fair necks and
faces: a large old pointer dog rested its massive head on the knee of one
girl--in the lap of the other was cushioned a black cat.

A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants!  Who were
they?  They could not be the daughters of the elderly person at the
table; for she looked like a rustic, and they were all delicacy and
cultivation.  I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs: and yet, as I
gazed on them, I seemed intimate with every lineament.  I cannot call
them handsome--they were too pale and grave for the word: as they each
bent over a book, they looked thoughtful almost to severity.  A stand
between them supported a second candle and two great volumes, to which
they frequently referred, comparing them, seemingly, with the smaller
books they held in their hands, like people consulting a dictionary to
aid them in the task of translation.  This scene was as silent as if all
the figures had been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture: so
hushed was it, I could hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock
tick in its obscure corner; and I even fancied I could distinguish the
click-click of the woman's knitting-needles.  When, therefore, a voice
broke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough to me.

"Listen, Diana," said one of the absorbed students; "Franz and old Daniel
are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream from which
he has awakened in terror--listen!"  And in a low voice she read
something, of which not one word was intelligible to me; for it was in an
unknown tongue--neither French nor Latin.  Whether it were Greek or
German I could not tell.

"That is strong," she said, when she had finished: "I relish it."  The
other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated,
while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read.  At a later
day, I knew the language and the book; therefore, I will here quote the
line: though, when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on
sounding brass to me--conveying no meaning:--

"'Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.'  Good! good!"
she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled.  "There you have a
dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you!  The line is worth a
hundred pages of fustian.  'Ich wage die Gedanken in der Schale meines
Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.'  I like it!"

Both were again silent.

"Is there ony country where they talk i' that way?" asked the old woman,
looking up from her knitting.

"Yes, Hannah--a far larger country than England, where they talk in no
other way."

"Well, for sure case, I knawn't how they can understand t' one t'other:
and if either o' ye went there, ye could tell what they said, I guess?"

"We could probably tell something of what they said, but not all--for we
are not as clever as you think us, Hannah.  We don't speak German, and we
cannot read it without a dictionary to help us."

"And what good does it do you?"

"We mean to teach it some time--or at least the elements, as they say;
and then we shall get more money than we do now."

"Varry like: but give ower studying; ye've done enough for to-night."

"I think we have: at least I'm tired.  Mary, are you?"

"Mortally: after all, it's tough work fagging away at a language with no
master but a lexicon."

"It is, especially such a language as this crabbed but glorious Deutsch.
I wonder when St. John will come home."

"Surely he will not be long now: it is just ten (looking at a little gold
watch she drew from her girdle).  It rains fast, Hannah: will you have
the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?"

The woman rose: she opened a door, through which I dimly saw a passage:
soon I heard her stir a fire in an inner room; she presently came back.

"Ah, childer!" said she, "it fair troubles me to go into yond' room now:
it looks so lonesome wi' the chair empty and set back in a corner."

She wiped her eyes with her apron: the two girls, grave before, looked
sad now.

"But he is in a better place," continued Hannah: "we shouldn't wish him
here again.  And then, nobody need to have a quieter death nor he had."

"You say he never mentioned us?" inquired one of the ladies.

"He hadn't time, bairn: he was gone in a minute, was your father.  He had
been a bit ailing like the day before, but naught to signify; and when
Mr. St. John asked if he would like either o' ye to be sent for, he fair
laughed at him.  He began again with a bit of a heaviness in his head the
next day--that is, a fortnight sin'--and he went to sleep and niver
wakened: he wor a'most stark when your brother went into t' chamber and
fand him.  Ah, childer! that's t' last o' t' old stock--for ye and Mr.
St. John is like of different soart to them 'at's gone; for all your
mother wor mich i' your way, and a'most as book-learned.  She wor the
pictur' o' ye, Mary: Diana is more like your father."

I thought them so similar I could not tell where the old servant (for
such I now concluded her to be) saw the difference.  Both were fair
complexioned and slenderly made; both possessed faces full of distinction
and intelligence.  One, to be sure, had hair a shade darker than the
other, and there was a difference in their style of wearing it; Mary's
pale brown locks were parted and braided smooth: Diana's duskier tresses
covered her neck with thick curls.  The clock struck ten.

"Ye'll want your supper, I am sure," observed Hannah; "and so will Mr.
St. John when he comes in."

And she proceeded to prepare the meal.  The ladies rose; they seemed
about to withdraw to the parlour.  Till this moment, I had been so intent
on watching them, their appearance and conversation had excited in me so
keen an interest, I had half-forgotten my own wretched position: now it
recurred to me.  More desolate, more desperate than ever, it seemed from
contrast.  And how impossible did it appear to touch the inmates of this
house with concern on my behalf; to make them believe in the truth of my
wants and woes--to induce them to vouchsafe a rest for my wanderings!  As
I groped out the door, and knocked at it hesitatingly, I felt that last
idea to be a mere chimera.  Hannah opened.

"What do you want?" she inquired, in a voice of surprise, as she surveyed
me by the light of the candle she held.

"May I speak to your mistresses?" I said.

"You had better tell me what you have to say to them.  Where do you come
from?"

"I am a stranger."

"What is your business here at this hour?"

"I want a night's shelter in an out-house or anywhere, and a morsel of
bread to eat."

Distrust, the very feeling I dreaded, appeared in Hannah's face.  "I'll
give you a piece of bread," she said, after a pause; "but we can't take
in a vagrant to lodge.  It isn't likely."

"Do let me speak to your mistresses."

"No, not I.  What can they do for you?  You should not be roving about
now; it looks very ill."

"But where shall I go if you drive me away?  What shall I do?"

"Oh, I'll warrant you know where to go and what to do.  Mind you don't do
wrong, that's all.  Here is a penny; now go--"

"A penny cannot feed me, and I have no strength to go farther.  Don't
shut the door:--oh, don't, for God's sake!"

"I must; the rain is driving in--"

"Tell the young ladies.  Let me see them--"

"Indeed, I will not.  You are not what you ought to be, or you wouldn't
make such a noise.  Move off."

"But I must die if I am turned away."

"Not you.  I'm fear'd you have some ill plans agate, that bring you about
folk's houses at this time o' night.  If you've any
followers--housebreakers or such like--anywhere near, you may tell them
we are not by ourselves in the house; we have a gentleman, and dogs, and
guns."  Here the honest but inflexible servant clapped the door to and
bolted it within.

This was the climax.  A pang of exquisite suffering--a throe of true
despair--rent and heaved my heart.  Worn out, indeed, I was; not another
step could I stir.  I sank on the wet doorstep: I groaned--I wrung my
hands--I wept in utter anguish.  Oh, this spectre of death!  Oh, this
last hour, approaching in such horror!  Alas, this isolation--this
banishment from my kind!  Not only the anchor of hope, but the footing of
fortitude was gone--at least for a moment; but the last I soon
endeavoured to regain.

"I can but die," I said, "and I believe in God.  Let me try to wait His
will in silence."

These words I not only thought, but uttered; and thrusting back all my
misery into my heart, I made an effort to compel it to remain there--dumb
and still.

"All men must die," said a voice quite close at hand; "but all are not
condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as yours would be
if you perished here of want."

"Who or what speaks?" I asked, terrified at the unexpected sound, and
incapable now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid.  A form was
near--what form, the pitch-dark night and my enfeebled vision prevented
me from distinguishing.  With a loud long knock, the new-comer appealed
to the door.

"Is it you, Mr. St. John?" cried Hannah.

"Yes--yes; open quickly."

"Well, how wet and cold you must be, such a wild night as it is!  Come
in--your sisters are quite uneasy about you, and I believe there are bad
folks about.  There has been a beggar-woman--I declare she is not gone
yet!--laid down there.  Get up! for shame!  Move off, I say!"

"Hush, Hannah!  I have a word to say to the woman.  You have done your
duty in excluding, now let me do mine in admitting her.  I was near, and
listened to both you and her.  I think this is a peculiar case--I must at
least examine into it.  Young woman, rise, and pass before me into the
house."

{Hush, Hannah; I have a word to say to the woman: p323.jpg}

With difficulty I obeyed him.  Presently I stood within that clean,
bright kitchen--on the very hearth--trembling, sickening; conscious of an
aspect in the last degree ghastly, wild, and weather-beaten.  The two
ladies, their brother, Mr. St. John, the old servant, were all gazing at
me.

"St. John, who is it?" I heard one ask.

"I cannot tell: I found her at the door," was the reply.

"She does look white," said Hannah.

"As white as clay or death," was responded.  "She will fall: let her
sit."

And indeed my head swam: I dropped, but a chair received me.  I still
possessed my senses, though just now I could not speak.

"Perhaps a little water would restore her.  Hannah, fetch some.  But she
is worn to nothing.  How very thin, and how very bloodless!"

"A mere spectre!"

"Is she ill, or only famished?"

"Famished, I think.  Hannah, is that milk?  Give it me, and a piece of
bread."

Diana (I knew her by the long curls which I saw drooping between me and
the fire as she bent over me) broke some bread, dipped it in milk, and
put it to my lips.  Her face was near mine: I saw there was pity in it,
and I felt sympathy in her hurried breathing.  In her simple words, too,
the same balm-like emotion spoke: "Try to eat."

"Yes--try," repeated Mary gently; and Mary's hand removed my sodden
bonnet and lifted my head.  I tasted what they offered me: feebly at
first, eagerly soon.

"Not too much at first--restrain her," said the brother; "she has had
enough."  And he withdrew the cup of milk and the plate of bread.

"A little more, St. John--look at the avidity in her eyes."

"No more at present, sister.  Try if she can speak now--ask her her
name."

I felt I could speak, and I answered--"My name is Jane Elliott."  Anxious
as ever to avoid discovery, I had before resolved to assume an _alias_.

"And where do you live?  Where are your friends?"

I was silent.

"Can we send for any one you know?"

I shook my head.

"What account can you give of yourself?"

Somehow, now that I had once crossed the threshold of this house, and
once was brought face to face with its owners, I felt no longer outcast,
vagrant, and disowned by the wide world.  I dared to put off the
mendicant--to resume my natural manner and character.  I began once more
to know myself; and when Mr. St. John demanded an account--which at
present I was far too weak to render--I said after a brief pause--

"Sir, I can give you no details to-night."

"But what, then," said he, "do you expect me to do for you?"

"Nothing," I replied.  My strength sufficed for but short answers.  Diana
took the word--

"Do you mean," she asked, "that we have now given you what aid you
require? and that we may dismiss you to the moor and the rainy night?"

I looked at her.  She had, I thought, a remarkable countenance, instinct
both with power and goodness.  I took sudden courage.  Answering her
compassionate gaze with a smile, I said--"I will trust you.  If I were a
masterless and stray dog, I know that you would not turn me from your
hearth to-night: as it is, I really have no fear.  Do with me and for me
as you like; but excuse me from much discourse--my breath is short--I
feel a spasm when I speak."  All three surveyed me, and all three were
silent.

"Hannah," said Mr. St. John, at last, "let her sit there at present, and
ask her no questions; in ten minutes more, give her the remainder of that
milk and bread.  Mary and Diana, let us go into the parlour and talk the
matter over."

They withdrew.  Very soon one of the ladies returned--I could not tell
which.  A kind of pleasant stupor was stealing over me as I sat by the
genial fire.  In an undertone she gave some directions to Hannah.  Ere
long, with the servant's aid, I contrived to mount a staircase; my
dripping clothes were removed; soon a warm, dry bed received me.  I
thanked God--experienced amidst unutterable exhaustion a glow of grateful
joy--and slept.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: It is nearly the end of the day before Jane emerges from her room, but she is already resolved to leave Thornfield where she has been so happy. She fears that if she remains, she will be tempted to become Rochester's mistress. Rochester explains the circumstances behind the wedding - how he was tricked into marrying Bertha who was already showing signs of madness. He tried to end the marriage legally, but failed, so he brought his wife back from Jamaica to be housed in Thornfield, under the care of Grace Poole. He goes on to confess to Jane that he had spent most of his time in Europe and had had three mistresses. The next day, Jane leaves Thornfield with all the money she has, and her possessions. After two days of travel, she arrives at Whitcross district, hungry and exhausted. She wanders the streets for a few days trying to seek employment. Starved and exhausted, she ends up at the house of the family Rivers, a brother and two sisters called St. John, Mary and Diana. They also have a servant called Hannah.