prompt:
Chapter: The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity,
moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood.  I
had heard of it before.  Mr. Rochester often spoke of it, and sometimes
went there.  His father had purchased the estate for the sake of the game
covers.  He would have let the house, but could find no tenant, in
consequence of its ineligible and insalubrious site.  Ferndean then
remained uninhabited and unfurnished, with the exception of some two or
three rooms fitted up for the accommodation of the squire when he went
there in the season to shoot.

To this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the
characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small penetrating
rain.  The last mile I performed on foot, having dismissed the chaise and
driver with the double remuneration I had promised.  Even when within a
very short distance of the manor-house, you could see nothing of it, so
thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood about it.  Iron gates
between granite pillars showed me where to enter, and passing through
them, I found myself at once in the twilight of close-ranked trees.  There
was a grass-grown track descending the forest aisle between hoar and
knotty shafts and under branched arches.  I followed it, expecting soon
to reach the dwelling; but it stretched on and on, it wound far and
farther: no sign of habitation or grounds was visible.

I thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way.  The darkness of
natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me.  I looked round in
search of another road.  There was none: all was interwoven stem,
columnar trunk, dense summer foliage--no opening anywhere.

I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little; presently
I beheld a railing, then the house--scarce, by this dim light,
distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying
walls.  Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a
space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a semicircle.
There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad gravel-walk girdling
a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of the forest.  The house
presented two pointed gables in its front; the windows were latticed and
narrow: the front door was narrow too, one step led up to it.  The whole
looked, as the host of the Rochester Arms had said, "quite a desolate
spot."  It was as still as a church on a week-day: the pattering rain on
the forest leaves was the only sound audible in its vicinage.

"Can there be life here?" I asked.

Yes, life of some kind there was; for I heard a movement--that narrow
front-door was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue from the
grange.

It opened slowly: a figure came out into the twilight and stood on the
step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to feel
whether it rained.  Dusk as it was, I had recognised him--it was my
master, Edward Fairfax Rochester, and no other.

I stayed my step, almost my breath, and stood to watch him--to examine
him, myself unseen, and alas! to him invisible.  It was a sudden meeting,
and one in which rapture was kept well in check by pain.  I had no
difficulty in restraining my voice from exclamation, my step from hasty
advance.

His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever: his port
was still erect, his hair was still raven black; nor were his features
altered or sunk: not in one year's space, by any sorrow, could his
athletic strength be quelled or his vigorous prime blighted.  But in his
countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding--that
reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous to
approach in his sullen woe.  The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes
cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson.

And, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity?--if you do,
you little know me.  A soft hope blest with my sorrow that soon I should
dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those lips so sternly
sealed beneath it: but not yet.  I would not accost him yet.

He descended the one step, and advanced slowly and gropingly towards the
grass-plat.  Where was his daring stride now?  Then he paused, as if he
knew not which way to turn.  He lifted his hand and opened his eyelids;
gazed blank, and with a straining effort, on the sky, and toward the
amphitheatre of trees: one saw that all to him was void darkness.  He
stretched his right hand (the left arm, the mutilated one, he kept hidden
in his bosom); he seemed to wish by touch to gain an idea of what lay
around him: he met but vacancy still; for the trees were some yards off
where he stood.  He relinquished the endeavour, folded his arms, and
stood quiet and mute in the rain, now falling fast on his uncovered head.
At this moment John approached him from some quarter.

"Will you take my arm, sir?" he said; "there is a heavy shower coming on:
had you not better go in?"

"Let me alone," was the answer.

John withdrew without having observed me.  Mr. Rochester now tried to
walk about: vainly,--all was too uncertain.  He groped his way back to
the house, and, re-entering it, closed the door.

I now drew near and knocked: John's wife opened for me.  "Mary," I said,
"how are you?"

She started as if she had seen a ghost: I calmed her.  To her hurried "Is
it really you, miss, come at this late hour to this lonely place?"  I
answered by taking her hand; and then I followed her into the kitchen,
where John now sat by a good fire.  I explained to them, in few words,
that I had heard all which had happened since I left Thornfield, and that
I was come to see Mr. Rochester.  I asked John to go down to the turn-
pike-house, where I had dismissed the chaise, and bring my trunk, which I
had left there: and then, while I removed my bonnet and shawl, I
questioned Mary as to whether I could be accommodated at the Manor House
for the night; and finding that arrangements to that effect, though
difficult, would not be impossible, I informed her I should stay.  Just
at this moment the parlour-bell rang.

"When you go in," said I, "tell your master that a person wishes to speak
to him, but do not give my name."

"I don't think he will see you," she answered; "he refuses everybody."

When she returned, I inquired what he had said.  "You are to send in your
name and your business," she replied.  She then proceeded to fill a glass
with water, and place it on a tray, together with candles.

"Is that what he rang for?" I asked.

"Yes: he always has candles brought in at dark, though he is blind."

"Give the tray to me; I will carry it in."

I took it from her hand: she pointed me out the parlour door.  The tray
shook as I held it; the water spilt from the glass; my heart struck my
ribs loud and fast.  Mary opened the door for me, and shut it behind me.

This parlour looked gloomy: a neglected handful of fire burnt low in the
grate; and, leaning over it, with his head supported against the high,
old-fashioned mantelpiece, appeared the blind tenant of the room.  His
old dog, Pilot, lay on one side, removed out of the way, and coiled up as
if afraid of being inadvertently trodden upon.  Pilot pricked up his ears
when I came in: then he jumped up with a yelp and a whine, and bounded
towards me: he almost knocked the tray from my hands.  I set it on the
table; then patted him, and said softly, "Lie down!"  Mr. Rochester
turned mechanically to _see_ what the commotion was: but as he _saw_
nothing, he returned and sighed.

"Give me the water, Mary," he said.

I approached him with the now only half-filled glass; Pilot followed me,
still excited.

"What is the matter?" he inquired.

"Down, Pilot!" I again said.  He checked the water on its way to his
lips, and seemed to listen: he drank, and put the glass down.  "This is
you, Mary, is it not?"

"Mary is in the kitchen," I answered.

He put out his hand with a quick gesture, but not seeing where I stood,
he did not touch me.  "Who is this?  Who is this?" he demanded, trying,
as it seemed, to _see_ with those sightless eyes--unavailing and
distressing attempt!  "Answer me--speak again!" he ordered, imperiously
and aloud.

"Will you have a little more water, sir?  I spilt half of what was in the
glass," I said.

"_Who_ is it?  _What_ is it?  Who speaks?"

"Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here.  I came only this
evening," I answered.

"Great God!--what delusion has come over me?  What sweet madness has
seized me?"

"No delusion--no madness: your mind, sir, is too strong for delusion,
your health too sound for frenzy."

"And where is the speaker?  Is it only a voice?  Oh!  I _cannot_ see, but
I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst.  Whatever--whoever
you are--be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live!"

He groped; I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both mine.

"Her very fingers!" he cried; "her small, slight fingers!  If so there
must be more of her."

The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my
shoulder--neck--waist--I was entwined and gathered to him.

"Is it Jane?  _What_ is it?  This is her shape--this is her size--"

"And this her voice," I added.  "She is all here: her heart, too.  God
bless you, sir!  I am glad to be so near you again."

"Jane Eyre!--Jane Eyre," was all he said.

"My dear master," I answered, "I am Jane Eyre: I have found you out--I am
come back to you."

"In truth?--in the flesh?  My living Jane?"

"You touch me, sir,--you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold like a
corpse, nor vacant like air, am I?"

"My living darling!  These are certainly her limbs, and these her
features; but I cannot be so blest, after all my misery.  It is a dream;
such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to
my heart, as I do now; and kissed her, as thus--and felt that she loved
me, and trusted that she would not leave me."

"Which I never will, sir, from this day."

"Never will, says the vision?  But I always woke and found it an empty
mockery; and I was desolate and abandoned--my life dark, lonely,
hopeless--my soul athirst and forbidden to drink--my heart famished and
never to be fed.  Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will
fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before
you go--embrace me, Jane."

"There, sir--and there!"'

I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes--I swept his
hair from his brow, and kissed that too.  He suddenly seemed to arouse
himself: the conviction of the reality of all this seized him.

"It is you--is it, Jane?  You are come back to me then?"

"I am."

"And you do not lie dead in some ditch under some stream?  And you are
not a pining outcast amongst strangers?"

"No, sir!  I am an independent woman now."

"Independent!  What do you mean, Jane?"

"My uncle in Madeira is dead, and he left me five thousand pounds."

"Ah! this is practical--this is real!" he cried: "I should never dream
that.  Besides, there is that peculiar voice of hers, so animating and
piquant, as well as soft: it cheers my withered heart; it puts life into
it.--What, Janet!  Are you an independent woman?  A rich woman?"

"If you won't let me live with you, I can build a house of my own close
up to your door, and you may come and sit in my parlour when you want
company of an evening."

"But as you are rich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, friends who will look
after you, and not suffer you to devote yourself to a blind lameter like
me?"

"I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own
mistress."

"And you will stay with me?"

"Certainly--unless you object.  I will be your neighbour, your nurse,
your housekeeper.  I find you lonely: I will be your companion--to read
to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes and
hands to you.  Cease to look so melancholy, my dear master; you shall not
be left desolate, so long as I live."

He replied not: he seemed serious--abstracted; he sighed; he half-opened
his lips as if to speak: he closed them again.  I felt a little
embarrassed.  Perhaps I had too rashly over-leaped conventionalities; and
he, like St. John, saw impropriety in my inconsiderateness.  I had indeed
made my proposal from the idea that he wished and would ask me to be his
wife: an expectation, not the less certain because unexpressed, had
buoyed me up, that he would claim me at once as his own.  But no hint to
that effect escaping him and his countenance becoming more overcast, I
suddenly remembered that I might have been all wrong, and was perhaps
playing the fool unwittingly; and I began gently to withdraw myself from
his arms--but he eagerly snatched me closer.

"No--no--Jane; you must not go.  No--I have touched you, heard you, felt
the comfort of your presence--the sweetness of your consolation: I cannot
give up these joys.  I have little left in myself--I must have you.  The
world may laugh--may call me absurd, selfish--but it does not signify.  My
very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly
vengeance on its frame."

"Well, sir, I will stay with you: I have said so."

"Yes--but you understand one thing by staying with me; and I understand
another.  You, perhaps, could make up your mind to be about my hand and
chair--to wait on me as a kind little nurse (for you have an affectionate
heart and a generous spirit, which prompt you to make sacrifices for
those you pity), and that ought to suffice for me no doubt.  I suppose I
should now entertain none but fatherly feelings for you: do you think so?
Come--tell me."

"I will think what you like, sir: I am content to be only your nurse, if
you think it better."

"But you cannot always be my nurse, Janet: you are young--you must marry
one day."

"I don't care about being married."

"You should care, Janet: if I were what I once was, I would try to make
you care--but--a sightless block!"

He relapsed again into gloom.  I, on the contrary, became more cheerful,
and took fresh courage: these last words gave me an insight as to where
the difficulty lay; and as it was no difficulty with me, I felt quite
relieved from my previous embarrassment.  I resumed a livelier vein of
conversation.

"It is time some one undertook to rehumanise you," said I, parting his
thick and long uncut locks; "for I see you are being metamorphosed into a
lion, or something of that sort.  You have a 'faux air' of Nebuchadnezzar
in the fields about you, that is certain: your hair reminds me of eagles'
feathers; whether your nails are grown like birds' claws or not, I have
not yet noticed."

"On this arm, I have neither hand nor nails," he said, drawing the
mutilated limb from his breast, and showing it to me.  "It is a mere
stump--a ghastly sight!  Don't you think so, Jane?"

"It is a pity to see it; and a pity to see your eyes--and the scar of
fire on your forehead: and the worst of it is, one is in danger of loving
you too well for all this; and making too much of you."

"I thought you would be revolted, Jane, when you saw my arm, and my
cicatrised visage."

"Did you?  Don't tell me so--lest I should say something disparaging to
your judgment.  Now, let me leave you an instant, to make a better fire,
and have the hearth swept up.  Can you tell when there is a good fire?"

"Yes; with the right eye I see a glow--a ruddy haze."

"And you see the candles?"

"Very dimly--each is a luminous cloud."

"Can you see me?"

"No, my fairy: but I am only too thankful to hear and feel you."

"When do you take supper?"

"I never take supper."

"But you shall have some to-night.  I am hungry: so are you, I daresay,
only you forget."

Summoning Mary, I soon had the room in more cheerful order: I prepared
him, likewise, a comfortable repast.  My spirits were excited, and with
pleasure and ease I talked to him during supper, and for a long time
after.  There was no harassing restraint, no repressing of glee and
vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I
suited him; all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him.
Delightful consciousness!  It brought to life and light my whole nature:
in his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine.  Blind as he
was, smiles played over his face, joy dawned on his forehead: his
lineaments softened and warmed.

After supper, he began to ask me many questions, of where I had been,
what I had been doing, how I had found him out; but I gave him only very
partial replies: it was too late to enter into particulars that night.
Besides, I wished to touch no deep-thrilling chord--to open no fresh well
of emotion in his heart: my sole present aim was to cheer him.  Cheered,
as I have said, he was: and yet but by fits.  If a moment's silence broke
the conversation, he would turn restless, touch me, then say, "Jane."

"You are altogether a human being, Jane?  You are certain of that?"

{You are altogether a human being, Jane?  You are certain of that?:
p422.jpg}

"I conscientiously believe so, Mr. Rochester."

"Yet how, on this dark and doleful evening, could you so suddenly rise on
my lone hearth?  I stretched my hand to take a glass of water from a
hireling, and it was given me by you: I asked a question, expecting
John's wife to answer me, and your voice spoke at my ear."

"Because I had come in, in Mary's stead, with the tray."

"And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with you.
Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on for
months past?  Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night in day;
feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out, of hunger
when I forgot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow, and, at times, a very
delirium of desire to behold my Jane again.  Yes: for her restoration I
longed, far more than for that of my lost sight.  How can it be that Jane
is with me, and says she loves me?  Will she not depart as suddenly as
she came?  To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more."

A commonplace, practical reply, out of the train of his own disturbed
ideas, was, I was sure, the best and most reassuring for him in this
frame of mind.  I passed my finger over his eyebrows, and remarked that
they were scorched, and that I would apply something which would make
them grow as broad and black as ever.

"Where is the use of doing me good in any way, beneficent spirit, when,
at some fatal moment, you will again desert me--passing like a shadow,
whither and how to me unknown, and for me remaining afterwards
undiscoverable?

"Have you a pocket-comb about you, sir?"

"What for, Jane?"

"Just to comb out this shaggy black mane.  I find you rather alarming,
when I examine you close at hand: you talk of my being a fairy, but I am
sure, you are more like a brownie."

"Am I hideous, Jane?"

"Very, sir: you always were, you know."

"Humph!  The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever you have
sojourned."

"Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a hundred times
better people; possessed of ideas and views you never entertained in your
life: quite more refined and exalted."

"Who the deuce have you been with?"

"If you twist in that way you will make me pull the hair out of your
head; and then I think you will cease to entertain doubts of my
substantiality."

"Who have you been with, Jane?"

"You shall not get it out of me to-night, sir; you must wait till
to-morrow; to leave my tale half told, will, you know, be a sort of
security that I shall appear at your breakfast table to finish it.  By
the bye, I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only a glass of
water then: I must bring an egg at the least, to say nothing of fried
ham."

"You mocking changeling--fairy-born and human-bred!  You make me feel as
I have not felt these twelve months.  If Saul could have had you for his
David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the
harp."

"There, sir, you are redd up and made decent.  Now I'll leave you: I have
been travelling these last three days, and I believe I am tired.  Good
night."

"Just one word, Jane: were there only ladies in the house where you have
been?"

I laughed and made my escape, still laughing as I ran upstairs.  "A good
idea!"  I thought with glee.  "I see I have the means of fretting him out
of his melancholy for some time to come."

Very early the next morning I heard him up and astir, wandering from one
room to another.  As soon as Mary came down I heard the question: "Is
Miss Eyre here?"  Then: "Which room did you put her into?  Was it dry?  Is
she up?  Go and ask if she wants anything; and when she will come down."

I came down as soon as I thought there was a prospect of breakfast.
Entering the room very softly, I had a view of him before he discovered
my presence.  It was mournful, indeed, to witness the subjugation of that
vigorous spirit to a corporeal infirmity.  He sat in his chair--still,
but not at rest: expectant evidently; the lines of now habitual sadness
marking his strong features.  His countenance reminded one of a lamp
quenched, waiting to be re-lit--and alas! it was not himself that could
now kindle the lustre of animated expression: he was dependent on another
for that office!  I had meant to be gay and careless, but the
powerlessness of the strong man touched my heart to the quick: still I
accosted him with what vivacity I could.

"It is a bright, sunny morning, sir," I said.  "The rain is over and
gone, and there is a tender shining after it: you shall have a walk
soon."

I had wakened the glow: his features beamed.

"Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark!  Come to me.  You are not gone:
not vanished?  I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over
the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising sun
had rays.  All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane's tongue to
my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I
can feel is in her presence."

The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as
if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a
sparrow to become its purveyor.  But I would not be lachrymose: I dashed
off the salt drops, and busied myself with preparing breakfast.

Most of the morning was spent in the open air.  I led him out of the wet
and wild wood into some cheerful fields: I described to him how
brilliantly green they were; how the flowers and hedges looked refreshed;
how sparklingly blue was the sky.  I sought a seat for him in a hidden
and lovely spot, a dry stump of a tree; nor did I refuse to let him, when
seated, place me on his knee.  Why should I, when both he and I were
happier near than apart?  Pilot lay beside us: all was quiet.  He broke
out suddenly while clasping me in his arms--

"Cruel, cruel deserter!  Oh, Jane, what did I feel when I discovered you
had fled from Thornfield, and when I could nowhere find you; and, after
examining your apartment, ascertained that you had taken no money, nor
anything which could serve as an equivalent!  A pearl necklace I had
given you lay untouched in its little casket; your trunks were left
corded and locked as they had been prepared for the bridal tour.  What
could my darling do, I asked, left destitute and penniless?  And what did
she do?  Let me hear now."

Thus urged, I began the narrative of my experience for the last year.  I
softened considerably what related to the three days of wandering and
starvation, because to have told him all would have been to inflict
unnecessary pain: the little I did say lacerated his faithful heart
deeper than I wished.

I should not have left him thus, he said, without any means of making my
way: I should have told him my intention.  I should have confided in him:
he would never have forced me to be his mistress.  Violent as he had
seemed in his despair, he, in truth, loved me far too well and too
tenderly to constitute himself my tyrant: he would have given me half his
fortune, without demanding so much as a kiss in return, rather than I
should have flung myself friendless on the wide world.  I had endured, he
was certain, more than I had confessed to him.

"Well, whatever my sufferings had been, they were very short," I
answered: and then I proceeded to tell him how I had been received at
Moor House; how I had obtained the office of schoolmistress, &c.  The
accession of fortune, the discovery of my relations, followed in due
order.  Of course, St. John Rivers' name came in frequently in the
progress of my tale.  When I had done, that name was immediately taken
up.

"This St. John, then, is your cousin?"

"Yes."

"You have spoken of him often: do you like him?"

"He was a very good man, sir; I could not help liking him."

"A good man.  Does that mean a respectable well-conducted man of fifty?
Or what does it mean?"

"St John was only twenty-nine, sir."

"'_Jeune encore_,' as the French say.  Is he a person of low stature,
phlegmatic, and plain.  A person whose goodness consists rather in his
guiltlessness of vice, than in his prowess in virtue."

"He is untiringly active.  Great and exalted deeds are what he lives to
perform."

"But his brain?  That is probably rather soft?  He means well: but you
shrug your shoulders to hear him talk?"

"He talks little, sir: what he does say is ever to the point.  His brain
is first-rate, I should think not impressible, but vigorous."

"Is he an able man, then?"

"Truly able."

"A thoroughly educated man?"

"St. John is an accomplished and profound scholar."

"His manners, I think, you said are not to your taste?--priggish and
parsonic?"

"I never mentioned his manners; but, unless I had a very bad taste, they
must suit it; they are polished, calm, and gentlemanlike."

"His appearance,--I forget what description you gave of his appearance;--a
sort of raw curate, half strangled with his white neckcloth, and stilted
up on his thick-soled high-lows, eh?"

"St. John dresses well.  He is a handsome man: tall, fair, with blue
eyes, and a Grecian profile."

(Aside.)  "Damn him!"--(To me.)  "Did you like him, Jane?"

"Yes, Mr. Rochester, I liked him: but you asked me that before."

I perceived, of course, the drift of my interlocutor.  Jealousy had got
hold of him: she stung him; but the sting was salutary: it gave him
respite from the gnawing fang of melancholy.  I would not, therefore,
immediately charm the snake.

"Perhaps you would rather not sit any longer on my knee, Miss Eyre?" was
the next somewhat unexpected observation.

"Why not, Mr. Rochester?"

"The picture you have just drawn is suggestive of a rather too
overwhelming contrast.  Your words have delineated very prettily a
graceful Apollo: he is present to your imagination,--tall, fair, blue-
eyed, and with a Grecian profile.  Your eyes dwell on a Vulcan,--a real
blacksmith, brown, broad-shouldered: and blind and lame into the
bargain."

"I never thought of it, before; but you certainly are rather like Vulcan,
sir."

"Well, you can leave me, ma'am: but before you go" (and he retained me by
a firmer grasp than ever), "you will be pleased just to answer me a
question or two."  He paused.

"What questions, Mr. Rochester?"

Then followed this cross-examination.

"St. John made you schoolmistress of Morton before he knew you were his
cousin?"

"Yes."

"You would often see him?  He would visit the school sometimes?"

"Daily."

"He would approve of your plans, Jane?  I know they would be clever, for
you are a talented creature!"

"He approved of them--yes."

"He would discover many things in you he could not have expected to find?
Some of your accomplishments are not ordinary."

"I don't know about that."

"You had a little cottage near the school, you say: did he ever come
there to see you?"

"Now and then?"

"Of an evening?"

"Once or twice."

A pause.

"How long did you reside with him and his sisters after the cousinship
was discovered?"

"Five months."

"Did Rivers spend much time with the ladies of his family?"

"Yes; the back parlour was both his study and ours: he sat near the
window, and we by the table."

"Did he study much?"

"A good deal."

"What?"

"Hindostanee."

"And what did you do meantime?"

"I learnt German, at first."

"Did he teach you?"

"He did not understand German."

"Did he teach you nothing?"

"A little Hindostanee."

"Rivers taught you Hindostanee?"

"Yes, sir."

"And his sisters also?"

"No."

"Only you?"

"Only me."

"Did you ask to learn?"

"No."

"He wished to teach you?"

"Yes."

A second pause.

"Why did he wish it?  Of what use could Hindostanee be to you?"

"He intended me to go with him to India."

"Ah! here I reach the root of the matter.  He wanted you to marry him?"

"He asked me to marry him."

"That is a fiction--an impudent invention to vex me."

"I beg your pardon, it is the literal truth: he asked me more than once,
and was as stiff about urging his point as ever you could be."

"Miss Eyre, I repeat it, you can leave me.  How often am I to say the
same thing?  Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my knee, when I
have given you notice to quit?"

"Because I am comfortable there."

"No, Jane, you are not comfortable there, because your heart is not with
me: it is with this cousin--this St. John.  Oh, till this moment, I
thought my little Jane was all mine!  I had a belief she loved me even
when she left me: that was an atom of sweet in much bitter.  Long as we
have been parted, hot tears as I have wept over our separation, I never
thought that while I was mourning her, she was loving another!  But it is
useless grieving.  Jane, leave me: go and marry Rivers."

"Shake me off, then, sir,--push me away, for I'll not leave you of my own
accord."

"Jane, I ever like your tone of voice: it still renews hope, it sounds so
truthful.  When I hear it, it carries me back a year.  I forget that you
have formed a new tie.  But I am not a fool--go--"

"Where must I go, sir?"

"Your own way--with the husband you have chosen."

"Who is that?"

"You know--this St. John Rivers."

"He is not my husband, nor ever will be.  He does not love me: I do not
love him.  He loves (as he _can_ love, and that is not as you love) a
beautiful young lady called Rosamond.  He wanted to marry me only because
he thought I should make a suitable missionary's wife, which she would
not have done.  He is good and great, but severe; and, for me, cold as an
iceberg.  He is not like you, sir: I am not happy at his side, nor near
him, nor with him.  He has no indulgence for me--no fondness.  He sees
nothing attractive in me; not even youth--only a few useful mental
points.--Then I must leave you, sir, to go to him?"

I shuddered involuntarily, and clung instinctively closer to my blind but
beloved master.  He smiled.

"What, Jane!  Is this true?  Is such really the state of matters between
you and Rivers?"

"Absolutely, sir!  Oh, you need not be jealous!  I wanted to tease you a
little to make you less sad: I thought anger would be better than grief.
But if you wish me to love you, could you but see how much I _do_ love
you, you would be proud and content.  All my heart is yours, sir: it
belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest
of me from your presence for ever."

Again, as he kissed me, painful thoughts darkened his aspect.

"My seared vision!  My crippled strength!" he murmured regretfully.

I caressed, in order to soothe him.  I knew of what he was thinking, and
wanted to speak for him, but dared not.  As he turned aside his face a
minute, I saw a tear slide from under the sealed eyelid, and trickle down
the manly cheek.  My heart swelled.

"I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield
orchard," he remarked ere long.  "And what right would that ruin have to
bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?"

"You are no ruin, sir--no lightning-struck tree: you are green and
vigorous.  Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or
not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow
they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength
offers them so safe a prop."

Again he smiled: I gave him comfort.

"You speak of friends, Jane?" he asked.

"Yes, of friends," I answered rather hesitatingly: for I knew I meant
more than friends, but could not tell what other word to employ.  He
helped me.

"Ah!  Jane.  But I want a wife."

"Do you, sir?"

"Yes: is it news to you?"

"Of course: you said nothing about it before."

"Is it unwelcome news?"

"That depends on circumstances, sir--on your choice."

"Which you shall make for me, Jane.  I will abide by your decision."

"Choose then, sir--_her who loves you best_."

"I will at least choose--_her I love best_.  Jane, will you marry me?"

"Yes, sir."

"A poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand?"

"Yes, sir."

"A crippled man, twenty years older than you, whom you will have to wait
on?"

"Yes, sir."

"Truly, Jane?"

"Most truly, sir."

"Oh! my darling!  God bless you and reward you!"

"Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life--if ever I thought a
good thought--if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer--if ever I
wished a righteous wish,--I am rewarded now.  To be your wife is, for me,
to be as happy as I can be on earth."

"Because you delight in sacrifice."

"Sacrifice!  What do I sacrifice?  Famine for food, expectation for
content.  To be privileged to put my arms round what I value--to press my
lips to what I love--to repose on what I trust: is that to make a
sacrifice?  If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice."

"And to bear with my infirmities, Jane: to overlook my deficiencies."

"Which are none, sir, to me.  I love you better now, when I can really be
useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when you
disdained every part but that of the giver and protector."

"Hitherto I have hated to be helped--to be led: henceforth, I feel I
shall hate it no more.  I did not like to put my hand into a hireling's,
but it is pleasant to feel it circled by Jane's little fingers.  I
preferred utter loneliness to the constant attendance of servants; but
Jane's soft ministry will be a perpetual joy.  Jane suits me: do I suit
her?"

"To the finest fibre of my nature, sir."

"The case being so, we have nothing in the world to wait for: we must be
married instantly."

He looked and spoke with eagerness: his old impetuosity was rising.

"We must become one flesh without any delay, Jane: there is but the
licence to get--then we marry."

"Mr. Rochester, I have just discovered the sun is far declined from its
meridian, and Pilot is actually gone home to his dinner.  Let me look at
your watch."

"Fasten it into your girdle, Janet, and keep it henceforward: I have no
use for it."

"It is nearly four o'clock in the afternoon, sir.  Don't you feel
hungry?"

"The third day from this must be our wedding-day, Jane.  Never mind fine
clothes and jewels, now: all that is not worth a fillip."

"The sun has dried up all the rain-drops, sir.  The breeze is still: it
is quite hot."

"Do you know, Jane, I have your little pearl necklace at this moment
fastened round my bronze scrag under my cravat?  I have worn it since the
day I lost my only treasure, as a memento of her."

"We will go home through the wood: that will be the shadiest way."

He pursued his own thoughts without heeding me.

"Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells
with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now.  He sees not
as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more
wisely.  I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower--breathed
guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me.  I, in my stiff-
necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to
the decree, I defied it.  Divine justice pursued its course; disasters
came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow
of death.  _His_ chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has
humbled me for ever.  You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it
now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its
weakness?  Of late, Jane--only--only of late--I began to see and
acknowledge the hand of God in my doom.  I began to experience remorse,
repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker.  I began sometimes to
pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.

"Some days since: nay, I can number them--four; it was last Monday night,
a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced frenzy--sorrow,
sullenness.  I had long had the impression that since I could nowhere
find you, you must be dead.  Late that night--perhaps it might be between
eleven and twelve o'clock--ere I retired to my dreary rest, I supplicated
God, that, if it seemed good to Him, I might soon be taken from this
life, and admitted to that world to come, where there was still hope of
rejoining Jane.

"I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open: it
soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars and
only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a moon.  I longed
for thee, Janet!  Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh!  I
asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long
enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and
peace once more.  That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged--that I
could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my
heart's wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words--'Jane!
Jane!  Jane!'"

"Did you speak these words aloud?"

"I did, Jane.  If any listener had heard me, he would have thought me
mad: I pronounced them with such frantic energy."

"And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?"

"Yes; but the time is of no consequence: what followed is the strange
point.  You will think me superstitious,--some superstition I have in my
blood, and always had: nevertheless, this is true--true at least it is
that I heard what I now relate.

"As I exclaimed 'Jane!  Jane!  Jane!' a voice--I cannot tell whence the
voice came, but I know whose voice it was--replied, 'I am coming: wait
for me;' and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words--'Where
are you?'

"I'll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened to my
mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express.  Ferndean is
buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls dull, and dies
unreverberating.  'Where are you?' seemed spoken amongst mountains; for I
heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words.  Cooler and fresher at the
moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have deemed that in some
wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting.  In spirit, I believe we must
have met.  You no doubt were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane:
perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine; for those were
your accents--as certain as I live--they were yours!"

Reader, it was on Monday night--near midnight--that I too had received
the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to
it.  I listened to Mr. Rochester's narrative, but made no disclosure in
return.  The coincidence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be
communicated or discussed.  If I told anything, my tale would be such as
must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer: and
that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not the
deeper shade of the supernatural.  I kept these things then, and pondered
them in my heart.

"You cannot now wonder," continued my master, "that when you rose upon me
so unexpectedly last night, I had difficulty in believing you any other
than a mere voice and vision, something that would melt to silence and
annihilation, as the midnight whisper and mountain echo had melted
before.  Now, I thank God!  I know it to be otherwise.  Yes, I thank
God!"

He put me off his knee, rose, and reverently lifting his hat from his
brow, and bending his sightless eyes to the earth, he stood in mute
devotion.  Only the last words of the worship were audible.

"I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has remembered
mercy.  I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead
henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto!"

Then he stretched his hand out to be led.  I took that dear hand, held it
a moment to my lips, then let it pass round my shoulder: being so much
lower of stature than he, I served both for his prop and guide.  We
entered the wood, and wended homeward.

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

completion: Jane goes to Ferndean. From a distance, she sees Rochester reach a hand out of the door, testing for rain. His body looks the same, but his face is desperate and disconsolate. Rochester returns inside, and Jane approaches the house. She knocks, and Mary answers the door. Inside, Jane carries a tray to Rochester, who is unable to see her. When he realizes that Jane is in the room with him, he thinks she must be a ghost or spirit speaking to him. When he catches her hand, he takes her in his arms, and she promises never to leave him. The next morning they walk through the woods, and Jane tells Rochester about her experiences the previous year. She has to assure him that she is not in love with St. John. He asks her again to marry him, and she says yes--they are now free from the specter of Bertha Mason. Rochester tells Jane that a few nights earlier, in a moment of desperation, he called out her name and thought he heard her answer. She does not wish to upset him or excite him in his fragile condition, and so she does not tell him about hearing his voice at Moor House


prompt:
Chapter: Reader, I married him.  A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and
clerk, were alone present.  When we got back from church, I went into the
kitchen of the manor-house, where Mary was cooking the dinner and John
cleaning the knives, and I said--

"Mary, I have been married to Mr. Rochester this morning."  The
housekeeper and her husband were both of that decent phlegmatic order of
people, to whom one may at any time safely communicate a remarkable piece
of news without incurring the danger of having one's ears pierced by some
shrill ejaculation, and subsequently stunned by a torrent of wordy
wonderment.  Mary did look up, and she did stare at me: the ladle with
which she was basting a pair of chickens roasting at the fire, did for
some three minutes hang suspended in air; and for the same space of time
John's knives also had rest from the polishing process: but Mary, bending
again over the roast, said only--

"Have you, Miss?  Well, for sure!"

A short time after she pursued--"I seed you go out with the master, but I
didn't know you were gone to church to be wed;" and she basted away.
John, when I turned to him, was grinning from ear to ear.

"I telled Mary how it would be," he said: "I knew what Mr. Edward" (John
was an old servant, and had known his master when he was the cadet of the
house, therefore, he often gave him his Christian name)--"I knew what Mr.
Edward would do; and I was certain he would not wait long neither: and
he's done right, for aught I know.  I wish you joy, Miss!" and he
politely pulled his forelock.

"Thank you, John.  Mr. Rochester told me to give you and Mary this."  I
put into his hand a five-pound note.  Without waiting to hear more, I
left the kitchen.  In passing the door of that sanctum some time after, I
caught the words--

"She'll happen do better for him nor ony o't' grand ladies."  And again,
"If she ben't one o' th' handsomest, she's noan faal and varry
good-natured; and i' his een she's fair beautiful, onybody may see that."

I wrote to Moor House and to Cambridge immediately, to say what I had
done: fully explaining also why I had thus acted.  Diana and Mary
approved the step unreservedly.  Diana announced that she would just give
me time to get over the honeymoon, and then she would come and see me.

"She had better not wait till then, Jane," said Mr. Rochester, when I
read her letter to him; "if she does, she will be too late, for our
honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your
grave or mine."

How St. John received the news, I don't know: he never answered the
letter in which I communicated it: yet six months after he wrote to me,
without, however, mentioning Mr. Rochester's name or alluding to my
marriage.  His letter was then calm, and, though very serious, kind.  He
has maintained a regular, though not frequent, correspondence ever since:
he hopes I am happy, and trusts I am not of those who live without God in
the world, and only mind earthly things.

You have not quite forgotten little Adele, have you, reader?  I had not;
I soon asked and obtained leave of Mr. Rochester, to go and see her at
the school where he had placed her.  Her frantic joy at beholding me
again moved me much.  She looked pale and thin: she said she was not
happy.  I found the rules of the establishment were too strict, its
course of study too severe for a child of her age: I took her home with
me.  I meant to become her governess once more, but I soon found this
impracticable; my time and cares were now required by another--my husband
needed them all.  So I sought out a school conducted on a more indulgent
system, and near enough to permit of my visiting her often, and bringing
her home sometimes.  I took care she should never want for anything that
could contribute to her comfort: she soon settled in her new abode,
became very happy there, and made fair progress in her studies.  As she
grew up, a sound English education corrected in a great measure her
French defects; and when she left school, I found in her a pleasing and
obliging companion: docile, good-tempered, and well-principled.  By her
grateful attention to me and mine, she has long since well repaid any
little kindness I ever had it in my power to offer her.

My tale draws to its close: one word respecting my experience of married
life, and one brief glance at the fortunes of those whose names have most
frequently recurred in this narrative, and I have done.

I have now been married ten years.  I know what it is to live entirely
for and with what I love best on earth.  I hold myself supremely
blest--blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's
life as fully as he is mine.  No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I
am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.  I know
no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than
we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate
bosoms; consequently, we are ever together.  To be together is for us to
be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.  We talk, I
believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and
an audible thinking.  All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his
confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character--perfect
concord is the result.

Mr. Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union; perhaps
it was that circumstance that drew us so very near--that knit us so very
close: for I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand.
Literally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of his eye.  He saw
nature--he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his
behalf, and of putting into words the effect of field, tree, town, river,
cloud, sunbeam--of the landscape before us; of the weather round us--and
impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his
eye.  Never did I weary of reading to him; never did I weary of
conducting him where he wished to go: of doing for him what he wished to
be done.  And there was a pleasure in my services, most full, most
exquisite, even though sad--because he claimed these services without
painful shame or damping humiliation.  He loved me so truly, that he knew
no reluctance in profiting by my attendance: he felt I loved him so
fondly, that to yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest wishes.

One morning at the end of the two years, as I was writing a letter to his
dictation, he came and bent over me, and said--"Jane, have you a
glittering ornament round your neck?"

I had a gold watch-chain: I answered "Yes."

"And have you a pale blue dress on?"

{And have you a pale blue dress on?: p435.jpg}

I had.  He informed me then, that for some time he had fancied the
obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense; and that now he was
sure of it.

He and I went up to London.  He had the advice of an eminent oculist; and
he eventually recovered the sight of that one eye.  He cannot now see
very distinctly: he cannot read or write much; but he can find his way
without being led by the hand: the sky is no longer a blank to him--the
earth no longer a void.  When his first-born was put into his arms, he
could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once
were--large, brilliant, and black.  On that occasion, he again, with a
full heart, acknowledged that God had tempered judgment with mercy.

My Edward and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we most
love are happy likewise.  Diana and Mary Rivers are both married:
alternately, once every year, they come to see us, and we go to see them.
Diana's husband is a captain in the navy, a gallant officer and a good
man.  Mary's is a clergyman, a college friend of her brother's, and, from
his attainments and principles, worthy of the connection.  Both Captain
Fitzjames and Mr. Wharton love their wives, and are loved by them.

As to St. John Rivers, he left England: he went to India.  He entered on
the path he had marked for himself; he pursues it still.  A more
resolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amidst rocks and dangers.
Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy, and zeal, and truth, he
labours for his race; he clears their painful way to improvement; he hews
down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it.  He
may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but his is the
sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from
the onslaught of Apollyon.  His is the exaction of the apostle, who
speaks but for Christ, when he says--"Whosoever will come after me, let
him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me."  His is the
ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a place in the
first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth--who stand without
fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty victories of
the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful.

St. John is unmarried: he never will marry now.  Himself has hitherto
sufficed to the toil, and the toil draws near its close: his glorious sun
hastens to its setting.  The last letter I received from him drew from my
eyes human tears, and yet filled my heart with divine joy: he anticipated
his sure reward, his incorruptible crown.  I know that a stranger's hand
will write to me next, to say that the good and faithful servant has been
called at length into the joy of his Lord.  And why weep for this?  No
fear of death will darken St. John's last hour: his mind will be
unclouded, his heart will be undaunted, his hope will be sure, his faith
steadfast.  His own words are a pledge of this--

"My Master," he says, "has forewarned me.  Daily He announces more
distinctly,--'Surely I come quickly!' and hourly I more eagerly
respond,--'Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!'"

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

completion: Jane and Rochester marry with no witnesses other than the parson and the church clerk. Jane writes to her cousins with the news. St. John never acknowledges what has happened, but Mary and Diana write back with their good wishes. Jane visits Adele at her school, and finds her unhappy. Remembering her own childhood experience, Jane moves Adele to a more congenial school, and Adele grows up to be a very pleasant and mild-mannered young woman. Jane writes that she is narrating her story after ten years of marriage to Rochester, which she describes as inexpressibly blissful. They live as equals, and she helps him to cope with his blindness. After two years, Rochester begins to regain his vision in one eye, and when their first child--a boy--is born, Rochester is able to see the baby. Jane writes that Diana and Mary have both found husbands and that St. John went to India as he had planned. She notes that in his last letter, St. John claimed to have had a premonition of his own approaching death. She does not believe that she will hear from St. John again, but she does not grieve for him, saying that he has fulfilled his promise and done God's work. She closes her book with a quote from his letter, in which he begs the Lord Jesus to come for him quickly


prompt:
Chapter: There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.  We had been
wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but
since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold
winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so
penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.

I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly
afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with
nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie,
the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to
Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.

The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama
in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with
her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying)
looked perfectly happy.  Me, she had dispensed from joining the group;
saying, "She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a
distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her
own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a
more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly
manner--something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were--she really
must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy,
little children."

"What does Bessie say I have done?" I asked.

"Jane, I don't like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something
truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner.  Be
seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent."

A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there.  It
contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care
that it should be one stored with pictures.  I mounted into the window-
seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having
drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double
retirement.

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left
were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the
drear November day.  At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my
book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon.  Afar, it offered a
pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat
shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and
lamentable blast.

I returned to my book--Bewick's History of British Birds: the letterpress
thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were
certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite
as a blank.  They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of
"the solitary rocks and promontories" by them only inhabited; of the
coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the
Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape--

   "Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
   Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
   Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
   Pours in among the stormy Hebrides."

Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland,
Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with "the vast
sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space,--that
reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation
of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround
the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold."  Of
these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all
the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children's brains,
but strangely impressive.  The words in these introductory pages
connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance
to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken
boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing
through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.

I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard, with
its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon,
girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the
hour of eventide.

The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine phantoms.

The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him, I passed over
quickly: it was an object of terror.

So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant
crowd surrounding a gallows.

Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped
understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting: as
interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings,
when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having brought her
ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit about it, and
while she got up Mrs. Reed's lace frills, and crimped her nightcap
borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure
taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as at a later period I
discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland.

With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my way.  I
feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon.  The breakfast-
room door opened.

"Boh!  Madam Mope!" cried the voice of John Reed; then he paused: he
found the room apparently empty.

"Where the dickens is she!" he continued.  "Lizzy!  Georgy! (calling to
his sisters) Joan is not here: tell mama she is run out into the rain--bad
animal!"

"It is well I drew the curtain," thought I; and I wished fervently he
might not discover my hiding-place: nor would John Reed have found it out
himself; he was not quick either of vision or conception; but Eliza just
put her head in at the door, and said at once--

"She is in the window-seat, to be sure, Jack."

And I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being dragged
forth by the said Jack.

"What do you want?" I asked, with awkward diffidence.

"Say, 'What do you want, Master Reed?'" was the answer.  "I want you to
come here;" and seating himself in an arm-chair, he intimated by a
gesture that I was to approach and stand before him.

John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than I,
for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a dingy and
unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and
large extremities.  He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him
bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks.  He ought
now to have been at school; but his mama had taken him home for a month
or two, "on account of his delicate health."  Mr. Miles, the master,
affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats
sent him from home; but the mother's heart turned from an opinion so
harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that John's
sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining after
home.

John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an antipathy
to me.  He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the week,
nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared
him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near.
There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired,
because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his
inflictions; the servants did not like to offend their young master by
taking my part against him, and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the
subject: she never saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though he did
both now and then in her very presence, more frequently, however, behind
her back.

Habitually obedient to John, I came up to his chair: he spent some three
minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could without
damaging the roots: I knew he would soon strike, and while dreading the
blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would
presently deal it.  I wonder if he read that notion in my face; for, all
at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and strongly.  I tottered,
and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or two from his
chair.

"That is for your impudence in answering mama awhile since," said he,
"and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for the look
you had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat!"

Accustomed to John Reed's abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it;
my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the
insult.

"What were you doing behind the curtain?" he asked.

"I was reading."

"Show the book."

I returned to the window and fetched it thence.

"You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama says;
you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not
to live here with gentlemen's children like us, and eat the same meals we
do, and wear clothes at our mama's expense.  Now, I'll teach you to
rummage my bookshelves: for they _are_ mine; all the house belongs to me,
or will do in a few years.  Go and stand by the door, out of the way of
the mirror and the windows."

I did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when I saw him
lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively
started aside with a cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume
was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and
cutting it.  The cut bled, the pain was sharp: my terror had passed its
climax; other feelings succeeded.

"Wicked and cruel boy!" I said.  "You are like a murderer--you are like a
slave-driver--you are like the Roman emperors!"

I had read Goldsmith's History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of
Nero, Caligula, etc.  Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I never
thought thus to have declared aloud.

"What! what!" he cried.  "Did she say that to me?  Did you hear her,
Eliza and Georgiana?  Won't I tell mama? but first--"

He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had
closed with a desperate thing.  I really saw in him a tyrant, a murderer.
I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck, and was
sensible of somewhat pungent suffering: these sensations for the time
predominated over fear, and I received him in frantic sort.  I don't very
well know what I did with my hands, but he called me "Rat!  Rat!" and
bellowed out aloud.  Aid was near him: Eliza and Georgiana had run for
Mrs. Reed, who was gone upstairs: she now came upon the scene, followed
by Bessie and her maid Abbot.  We were parted: I heard the words--

"Dear! dear!  What a fury to fly at Master John!"

"Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!"

Then Mrs. Reed subjoined--

"Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there."  Four hands were
immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.

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

completion: It is a cold and dreary winter afternoon, and outdoor activity is impossible. Jane's aunt, Mrs. Reed, has her own children, Eliza, John, and Georgiana, happily gathered around her on a sofa in the drawing room of Gateshead Hall. Jane is excluded from the group. She steals into the adjoining breakfast room and sits in a window with Bewick's History of British Birds; the pictures in the book correspond to her lonely feelings. John Reed interrupts Jane and drags her out of her hiding place. He is a fourteen-year-old overweight hulk, who is home from boarding school. He is pampered by his mother, who takes no notice of his bullying Jane, even when he does it in her presence. On this occasion John strikes Jane and tells her not to take liberties with the books. For her punishment, he makes her stand near the window and knocks her down. Infuriated by John's attack, Jane retaliates as never before and declares aloud what she thinks of John. Mrs. Reed and the servants separate the two children, and Mrs. Reed punishes Jane by locking her up in "the red room."


prompt:
Chapter: I resisted all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstance which
greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were disposed
to entertain of me.  The fact is, I was a trifle beside myself; or rather
_out_ of myself, as the French would say: I was conscious that a moment's
mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and, like any
other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths.

"Hold her arms, Miss Abbot: she's like a mad cat."

"For shame! for shame!" cried the lady's-maid.  "What shocking conduct,
Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress's son!  Your
young master."

"Master!  How is he my master?  Am I a servant?"

"No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep.
There, sit down, and think over your wickedness."

They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Reed,
and had thrust me upon a stool: my impulse was to rise from it like a
spring; their two pair of hands arrested me instantly.

"If you don't sit still, you must be tied down," said Bessie.  "Miss
Abbot, lend me your garters; she would break mine directly."

Miss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature.  This
preparation for bonds, and the additional ignominy it inferred, took a
little of the excitement out of me.

"Don't take them off," I cried; "I will not stir."

In guarantee whereof, I attached myself to my seat by my hands.

"Mind you don't," said Bessie; and when she had ascertained that I was
really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Miss Abbot
stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as
incredulous of my sanity.

"She never did so before," at last said Bessie, turning to the Abigail.

"But it was always in her," was the reply.  "I've told Missis often my
opinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me.  She's an underhand
little thing: I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover."

Bessie answered not; but ere long, addressing me, she said--"You ought to
be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Reed: she keeps
you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poorhouse."

I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very
first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind.  This
reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very
painful and crushing, but only half intelligible.  Miss Abbot joined in--

"And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed
and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with
them.  They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none: it
is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to
them."

"What we tell you is for your good," added Bessie, in no harsh voice,
"you should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, you would have
a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, Missis will send you
away, I am sure."

"Besides," said Miss Abbot, "God will punish her: He might strike her
dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go?  Come,
Bessie, we will leave her: I wouldn't have her heart for anything.  Say
your prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself; for if you don't
repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and
fetch you away."

They went, shutting the door, and locking it behind them.

The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say
never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall
rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it
contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the
mansion.  A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with
curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre;
the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half
shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red;
the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the
walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe,
the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany.  Out
of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-
up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles
counterpane.  Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair
near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and
looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.

This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because
remote from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was known to be
so seldom entered.  The house-maid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe
from the mirrors and the furniture a week's quiet dust: and Mrs. Reed
herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain
secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments, her
jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last
words lies the secret of the red-room--the spell which kept it so lonely
in spite of its grandeur.

Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his
last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the
undertaker's men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had
guarded it from frequent intrusion.

My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted,
was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before me;
to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken
reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the muffled
windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty
of the bed and room.  I was not quite sure whether they had locked the
door; and when I dared move, I got up and went to see.  Alas! yes: no
jail was ever more secure.  Returning, I had to cross before the looking-
glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed.
All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality:
and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and
arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all
else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of
the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's evening stories
represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing
before the eyes of belated travellers.  I returned to my stool.

Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour for
complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave
was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush
of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.

All John Reed's violent tyrannies, all his sisters' proud indifference,
all his mother's aversion, all the servants' partiality, turned up in my
disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well.  Why was I always
suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned?  Why
could I never please?  Why was it useless to try to win any one's favour?
Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected.  Georgiana, who had
a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage,
was universally indulged.  Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls,
seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase
indemnity for every fault.  John no one thwarted, much less punished;
though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks,
set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit,
and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory: he called
his mother "old girl," too; sometimes reviled her for her dark skin,
similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; not unfrequently tore
and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still "her own darling."  I dared
commit no fault: I strove to fulfil every duty; and I was termed naughty
and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to
night.

My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no
one had reproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had turned
against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded with
general opprobrium.

"Unjust!--unjust!" said my reason, forced by the agonising stimulus into
precocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up,
instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable
oppression--as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never
eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.

What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon!  How all my
brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection!  Yet in what
darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought!  I could
not answer the ceaseless inward question--_why_ I thus suffered; now, at
the distance of--I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.

I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I had nothing
in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen vassalage.  If
they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them.  They were not
bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathise with one
amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in
capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their
interest, or adding to their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the
germs of indignation at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment.  I
know that had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome,
romping child--though equally dependent and friendless--Mrs. Reed would
have endured my presence more complacently; her children would have
entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants
would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.

Daylight began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o'clock, and the
beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight.  I heard the rain
still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling
in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then
my courage sank.  My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn
depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire.  All said I was
wicked, and perhaps I might be so; what thought had I been but just
conceiving of starving myself to death?  That certainly was a crime: and
was I fit to die?  Or was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church
an inviting bourne?  In such vault I had been told did Mr. Reed lie
buried; and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with
gathering dread.  I could not remember him; but I knew that he was my own
uncle--my mother's brother--that he had taken me when a parentless infant
to his house; and that in his last moments he had required a promise of
Mrs. Reed that she would rear and maintain me as one of her own children.
Mrs. Reed probably considered she had kept this promise; and so she had,
I dare say, as well as her nature would permit her; but how could she
really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with her,
after her husband's death, by any tie?  It must have been most irksome to
find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a
parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial
alien permanently intruded on her own family group.

A singular notion dawned upon me.  I doubted not--never doubted--that if
Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I
sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls--occasionally also
turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaming mirror--I began to
recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the
violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the
perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit,
harassed by the wrongs of his sister's child, might quit its
abode--whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the
departed--and rise before me in this chamber.  I wiped my tears and
hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a
preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed
face, bending over me with strange pity.  This idea, consolatory in
theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I
endeavoured to stifle it--I endeavoured to be firm.  Shaking my hair from
my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room;
at this moment a light gleamed on the wall.  Was it, I asked myself, a
ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind?  No; moonlight
was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling
and quivered over my head.  I can now conjecture readily that this streak
of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some
one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken
as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a
herald of some coming vision from another world.  My heart beat thick, my
head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of
wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance
broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort.
Steps came running along the outer passage; the key turned, Bessie and
Abbot entered.

"Miss Eyre, are you ill?" said Bessie.

"What a dreadful noise! it went quite through me!" exclaimed Abbot.

"Take me out!  Let me go into the nursery!" was my cry.

"What for?  Are you hurt?  Have you seen something?" again demanded
Bessie.

"Oh!  I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come."  I had now got
hold of Bessie's hand, and she did not snatch it from me.

"She has screamed out on purpose," declared Abbot, in some disgust.  "And
what a scream!  If she had been in great pain one would have excused it,
but she only wanted to bring us all here: I know her naughty tricks."

"What is all this?" demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs. Reed
came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling stormily.
"Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre should be left
in the red-room till I came to her myself."

"Miss Jane screamed so loud, ma'am," pleaded Bessie.

"Let her go," was the only answer.  "Loose Bessie's hand, child: you
cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured.  I abhor
artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that tricks
will not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer, and it is only on
condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you
then."

"O aunt! have pity!  Forgive me!  I cannot endure it--let me be punished
some other way!  I shall be killed if--"

"Silence!  This violence is all most repulsive:" and so, no doubt, she
felt it.  I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked on
me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous
duplicity.

Bessie and Abbot having retreated, Mrs. Reed, impatient of my now frantic
anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked me in, without
farther parley.  I heard her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone,
I suppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness closed the scene.

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

completion: Jane is forcibly taken to the red room by Bessie and Miss Abbot, but she resists until Bessie threatens to tie her up. Bessie reminds Jane that she is living on Mrs. Reed's charity and should make herself useful and pleasant so that she can continue to have a home there. Miss Abbot frightens Jane by saying that God might strike her dead in the middle of her outbursts. She plays on Jane's fears by saying that if she does not repent, something bad might come down the chimney and take her away. The red room is a stately but rarely used chamber. It is chilly and very quiet, as it is far away from the nursery and the kitchens. Only the housemaid goes there regularly to dust the furniture. Mrs. Reed visits it occasionally to examine her jewelry box, which is kept in a secret drawer in the wardrobe. The real secret of the red room, however, is that Mr. Reed died there nine years ago. As soon as Miss Abbot and Bessie leave, Jane starts brooding on the injustices meted out to her at Gateshead Hall and wonders why she must suffer. She is sure that her pretty cousin Georgiana, for instance, would not receive the same bad treatment. Then she remembers that before his death, her uncle, Mr. Reed, had secured a promise from Mrs. Reed to take care of Jane as one of her own children. This thought, accompanied by the morning light on the wall, convince Jane that she sees a ghostly vision from another world. Screaming with fear, she rushes to the door and shakes the lock in desperation. This brings Bessie, Miss Abbot, and Mrs. Reed up to the room. She appeals for mercy, but Mrs. Reed dismisses her fears as a trick to escape punishment and locks her in again. Jane suffers a fit and falls unconscious.