“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 Adèle 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. Adèle 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 o
f 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. For having found love, I knew—for all my fanciful notions—it was not enough. How I yearned that it would be so. Love—and delight in flesh—should be enough! 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.’”
In my heart, my soul, my mind, I already was, perhaps always would be. “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 judgement, 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 forever!
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 th
e 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 Adèle!” 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.
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