 CHAPTER 27 Some time in the afternoon I raced my head, and looking round and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I asked, what am I to do? But the answer my mind gave, leave Thornfield at once. Was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears. I said I could not bear such words now, that I am not Edward Rochester's bride is the least part of my woe, I alleged, that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams and found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master, but that I must leave him decidedly instantly entirely is intolerable, I cannot do it. But then a voice within me averred that I could do it, and foretold that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution, I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me, and conscience turned tyrant, held passion by the throat, told her tauntingly she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that, with that arm of iron, he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony. Let me be torn away, then I cried, let another help me. No, you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you, you shall yourself pluck out your right eye, yourself cut off your right hand, your heart shall be the victim and you the priest to transfix it. I rose up suddenly, terror struck at the solitude which so ruthless a judge haunted, at the silence which so awful a voice filled. I had swam as I stood erect. I perceived that I was sickening from excitement and inanition, neither meat nor drink had passed my lips that day, for I had taken no breakfast. And with strange pang I now reflected that, long as I had been shut up here, no message had been sent to ask how I was, or to invite me to come down. Not even little Adèle had tapped at the door, not even Mrs. Fairfax had sought me. Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes, I murmured, as I undrew the bolt and passed out. I stumbled over an obstacle. My head was still dizzy, my sight was dim, and my limbs were feeble. I could not soon recover myself. I fell, but not on to the ground. An outstretched arm caught me. I looked up. I was supported by Mr. Rochester, who sat in a chair across my chamber threshold. "'You come out at last,' he said, "'will I have been waiting for you long and listening. Yet not one movement have I heard nor one sob. Five minutes more of that death-like hush, and I should have forced the lock like a burglar. So you shunned me. You shut yourself up and grieve alone. I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence. You are passionate. I expected a scene of some kind. I was prepared for the hot drain of tears, only I wanted them to be shed on my breast. Now a senseless flaw has received them, or your drenched handkerchief. But I err. You have not wept at all. I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but no trace of tears. I suppose, then, your heart has been weeping blood. Well, Jane, not a word of reproach, nothing bitter, nothing poignant, nothing to cut a feeling or sting a passion. You sit quietly where I have placed you and regard me with a weary, passive look. Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one little you-lam that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered at the shambles, he would not have rude his bloody blunder more than I now room mine. Will you ever forgive me? Reader, I forgave him at the moment, and on the spot. There was such deep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly energy in his manner. And besides, there was such unchanged love in his whole look and mean, I forgave him all, yet not in words, yet not outwardly, only at my heart's core. You know I am a scoundrel, Jane. Air-long he inquired wistfully, wondering, I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness, the result rather of weakness than of will. Yes, sir. Then tell me so roundly and sharply, don't spare me! I cannot. I am sick and tired. I want some water. He heaved a sort of shuddering sigh, and taking me in his arms carried me downstairs. At first I did not know to what room he had borne me, all was cloudy to my glazed sight. Presently I felt the reviving warmth of a fire, for summer as it was I had become icy cold in my chamber. He put wine to my lips, I tasted it, and revived. Then I ate something he offered me, and assumed myself. I was in the library, sitting in his chair, he was quite near. If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang it would be well for me, I thought. Then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my heartstrings, in rending them from among Mr. Rochester's. I must leave him, it appears. I do not want to leave him. I cannot leave him. How are you now, Jane? Much better, sir. I shall be well soon. Taste the wine again, Jane. I obeyed him. Then he put the glass on the table, stood before me, and looked at me attentively. Only he turned away with an inarticulate exclamation, full of passionate emotion of some kind. He walked fast through the room, and came back. He stooped towards me as if to kiss me, but I remembered caresses were now forbidden. I tied my face away, and put his aside. What? How is this? He exclaimed hastily. Oh, I know! You won't kiss the husband of Bertha Mason. You consider my arms filled, and my embrace is appropriated. At any rate, there is neither room nor claim for me, sir. Why, Jane? I will spare you the trouble of much talking. I will answer for you, because I have a wife already, you would reply. I guess rightly. Yes. If you think so, you must have a strange opinion of me. You must regard me as a plotting profligate, a base and low rake who has been simulating disinterested love in order to draw you into a snare deliberately laid and strip you of honour and rob you of self-respect. What do you say to that? I see you can say nothing in the first place. You are faint still, and have enough to do to draw your breath. In the second place, you cannot just accustom yourself to accuse and revile me, and besides the flood-gates of tears are opened, and they would rush out if you spoke much, and you have no desire to expostulate, to up-bray, to make a scene. You are thinking how to act, talking you consider as of no use. I know you. I am on my guard. Sir, I do not wish to act against you, I said, and my unsteady voice warned me to curtail my sentence. Not in your sense of the word, but in mine you are scheming to destroy me. You have as good as said that I am a married man. As a married man you will shun me, keep out of my way. Just now you have refused to kiss me. You intend to make yourself a complete stranger to me, to live under this roof only as Adele's governess. If ever I say a friendly word to you, if ever a friendly feeling inclines you again to me, you will say, that man had nearly made me his mistress. I must be ice and rock to him, and ice and rock you will accordingly become." I clad and steadied my voice to reply, All has changed about me, sir. I must change too. There is no doubt of that, and to avoid fluctuations of feeling and continual combats with recollections and associations, there is only one way. Adele must have a new governess, sir. Oh, Adele will go to school. I have settled that already. Nor do I mean to torment you with the hideous associations and recollections of Thornfield Hall—this accursed place, this tent of Ackon, this insolent vault offering the gassiness of living death to the light of the open sky—this narrow stone hell with its one real fiend worse than a legion of such as we imagine. Jane, you shall not stay here, nor will I. I was wrong ever to bring you to Thornfield Hall. Learning as I did how it was haunted, I charged them to conceal from you, before I ever saw you, all knowledge of the curse of the place, merely because I feared Adele never would have a governess to stay if she knew with what inmate she was housed, and my plans would not permit me to remove the maniac elsewhere. Though I possess an old house, Fern Dean Manor, even more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Surely those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge. But to each villain his own vice, and mine is not a tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate. Concealing the madwoman's neighbourhood from you, however, was something like covering a child with a cloak, and laying it down near an upus-tree. That demon's viscinage is poisoned, and always was. But I'll shut up Thornfield Hall. I'll nail up the front door and board the lower windows. I'll give Mrs. Poole two hundred a year to live here with my wife, as you term that fearful hag. Grace will do much for money, and she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby Retreat, to bear her company, and be at hand to give her aid in the paroxysms, when my wife is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on. Sir, I interrupted him. You are inexorable for that unfortunate lady. You speak of her with hate, with vindictive antithpathy. It is cruel. She cannot help being mad. Jane, my little darling, so I will call you for so you are. You don't know what you are talking about. You misjudge me again. It is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you? I do indeed, sir. Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own. In pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken it would be my treasure still. If you raved my arm, she can find you in not a straight waist-cut. Your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me. If you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her. In your quiet moments you would have no watcher and no nurse but me, and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return, and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me. But why do I follow that train of ideas? I was talking of removing you from Thornfield. All you know is prepared for prompt departure. Tomorrow you shall go. I only ask you to endure one more night under this roof-chain, and then farewell to its miseries and terrors for ever. I have a place to repair to, which will be a secure sanctuary from hateful reminiscences, from unwelcome intrusion, even from falsehood and slander. And take Adele with you, sir," I interrupted,—she will be a companion for you. What do you mean, Jane? I told you I would send Adele to school, and what do I want with a child for a companion, and not my own child, a French dancer's bastard? Why do you impotune me about her? I say why do you assign Adele to me for a companion? You spoke of a retirement, sir, and retirement and solitude are Adele. Too dull for you. Solitude? Solitude! He reiterated with irritation. I see I must come to an explanation. I don't know what Sphinx-like expression is forming in your countenance. You ought to share my solitude. Do you understand? I shook my head. It required a degree of courage, excited as he was becoming, even to risk that mute sign of descent. He had been walking fast about the room, and he stopped as if suddenly rooted to one spot. He looked at me long and hard. I turned my eyes from him, fixed them on the fire, and tried to assume and maintain a quiet collected aspect. Now for the hitch in Jane's character. He said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far, but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle. Here it is. Now for vexation and exasperation and endless trouble. By God! I long to exert a fraction of Samson's strength and break the entanglement like toe. He recommenced his walk, but soon again stopped, and this time just before me. Jane, will you hear reason? He stooped and approached his lips to my ear. Because if you won't, I'll try violence. His voice was hoarse. His look, that of a man who was just about to burst in sufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild license. I saw that at another moment, and with one impetus of frenzy more, I should be able to do nothing with him. The present, the passing second of time, was all I had in which to control and restrain him. A movement of repulsion, flight, fear would have sealed my doom—and his. But I was not afraid, not in the least. I felt an inward power, a sense of influence which supported me. The crisis was perilous, but not without its charm, such as the Indian perhaps feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I took hold of his clenched hand, loosened the contorted fingers, and said to him soothingly,— Sit down. I'll talk to you as long as you like, and hear all you have to say, whether reasonable or unreasonable. He sat down, but he did not get leave to speak directly. I had been struggling with tears for some time. I had taken great pains to repress them, because I knew he would not like to see me weep. Now, however, I considered it well to let them flow as freely in as long as they liked, if the flood annoyed him so much the better. So I gave way, and cried heartily. Soon I heard him earnestly in treating me to be composed. I said I could not, while he was in such a passion. But I am not angry, Jane. I only love you too well, and he would steal your little pale face with such a resolute frozen look, I could not endure it. Hush now, and wipe your eyes. His softened voice announced that he was subdued, so I in my turn became calm. Now he made an effort to rest his head on my shoulder, but I would not permit it. Then he would draw me to him. No. Jane. Jane! he said, in such an accent of bitter sadness it thrilled along every nerve I had. You don't love me, then. It was only my station and the rank of my wife that you valued. Now that you think me disqualified to become your husband, you recoil from my touch as if I were some toad or ape. These words cut me. Yet what could I do or say? I ought probably to have done or said nothing, but I was so tortured by a sense of remorse at this hurting his feelings I could not control the wish to drop balm where I had wounded. I do love you, I said, more than ever, but I must not show or indulge the feeling, and this is the last time I must express it. The last time, Jane, what? Do you think you can live with me and see me daily, and yet if you still love me be always cold and distant? No, sir. That I am certain I could not, and therefore I see there is but one way, but you'll be furious if I mention it. Oh, mention it! If I storm you have the art of weeping. Mr. Rochester, I must leave you. For how long, Jane? For a few minutes while you smooth your hair, which is somewhat dishevelled, and bathe your face which looks feverish? I must leave Adele and Thornfield. I must part with you for my whole life. I must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange scenes. Of course, I told you I should. I pass over the madness about parting from me. You mean you must become a part of me. As to the new existence, it is all right. You shall yet be my wife. I am not married. You shall be Mrs. Rochester, both virtually and nominally. I shall keep to only you so long as you and I live. You shall go to a place I have in the south of France, a whitewashed villa on the shores of the Mediterranean. There you shall live a happy and guarded and most innocent life. Give a fear that I wish to lure you into error, to make you my mistress. Why did you shake your head? Jane, you must be reasonable, and truth I shall again become frantic." His voice and hand quivered. His large nostrils dilated. His eye blazed. Still I dared to speak. Sir, your wife is living. That is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your mistress. To say otherwise is sophisticated. It's false." Jane, I am not a gentle tempered man. You forget that. I am not long-enduring. I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me and yourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and beware." He bared his wrist, and offered it to me. The blood was forsaking his cheek and lips. They were growing livid. I was distressed on all hands. To agitate him thus deeply by a resistance he so abhorred was cruel. To yield was out of the question. I did what human beings do instinctively when they are driven to utter extremity, looked for aid to one higher than man. The words— God, help me!—burst involuntarily from my lips. I am a fool. cried Mr. Roptus to suddenly. I keep telling her I am not married and do not explain to her why. I forget she knows nothing of the character of that woman, or of the circumstances attending my infernal union with her. How I am certain Jane will agree with me in opinion when she knows all that I know. Just put your hand in mine, Janet, that I may have the evidence of touch as well as sight to prove you are near me, and I will in a few words show you the real state of the case. Can you listen to me? Yes, sir. For hours, if you will. I ask only minutes. Jane, did you ever hear or know that I was not the eldest son of my house, that I once had a brother older than I? I remember Mrs. Fairfax told me so once. And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious, grasping man? I have understood something to that effect. Well Jane, being so, it was his resolution to keep the property together. He could not bear the idea of dividing his estate and leaving me a fair portion. All he resolved should go to my brother, Rowland. Yet as little could he endure that a son of his should be a poor man. I must be provided for by a wealthy marriage. He sought me a partner, but times. Mr. Mace in a West India planter and merchant was his old acquaintance. He was certain his possessions were real and vast. He made inquiries. Mr. Mason he found had a son and daughter, and learned from him that he could and would give the latter a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. That sufficed. When I left college, I was sent out to Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me. My father said nothing about her money, but told me Miss Mason was the boast of Spanish town for her beauty. And this was no lie. I found her a fine woman in the style of Blanche Ingram, tall, dark, and majestic. Her family wished to secure me because I was of good race, and so did she. They showed it to me in parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom saw her alone, and had very little private conversation with her. She flattered me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and accomplishments. All the men in her circles seemed to admire her and envy me. I was dazzled, stimulated, my senses were excited, and being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her. There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth will not hurry a man to its commission. Her relatives encouraged me, competitors peaked me, she allured me. Her marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was. How I have no respect for myself when I think of that act. An agony even would contempt masters me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her. I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her nature. I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement in her mind or manners, and I married her—gross, groveling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was, with less sin I might have. But let me remember to whom I am speaking. My bride's mother I had never seen. I understood she was dead. The honeymoon over I learned my mistake. She was only mad, and shut up in a lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother, too—a complete dumb idiot. The elder one whom you have seen, and whom I cannot hate, whilst I abhor all his kindred, because he has some grains of affection in his feeble mind, shown in the continued interest he takes in his wretched sister, and also in a dog-like attachment he once bore me, will probably be the same state one day. My father and my brother Roland knew all this, but they thought only of the thirty thousand pounds and joined in the plot against me. These were vile discoveries. But except for the treachery of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mine common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger, when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort, that kindly conversation could not be to sustain between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse, and trite, perverse, and imbecile, when I perceived that I should never have acquired or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders. Even then, I restrained myself. I eschewed up braiding. I curtailed remonstrance. I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in secret. I repressed the deep antipathy I felt. Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details. Some strong word shall express what I have to say. I lived with that woman upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed. Her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity. Her vices sprang up fast and rank. They were so strong only cruelty could check them, and I would not use cruelty. What a pygmy intellect she had, and what giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste. My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four years my father died too. I was rich enough now, yet poor to hideous indigence. A nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw was associated with mine, but called by the Lord, by society, a part of me, and I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings. For the doctors now discovered that my wife was mad. Her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity. Jane, you don't like my narrative. You look almost sick. Shall I defer the rest to another day? No, sir. Finish it now. I pity you. I do earnestly pity you. Pity Jane, from some people as a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it. But that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts. It is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not your pity, Jane. It is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this moment, with which your eyes are now almost overflowing, with which your heart is heaving, with which your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love. Its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion. I accepted, Jane. Let the daughter have free advent. My arms wait to receive her. Now, sir, proceed. What did you do when you found she was mad? Jane. I approached the verge of despair. A remnant of self-respect was all that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes of the world I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour, but I resolved to be clean in my own sight, and to the last I repudiated the contamination of her crimes, and wrenched myself from connection with her mental defects. Still, society associated my name and person with hers. I yet saw her, and heard her daily, something of a breath—fuh!—mixed with the air I breathed, and besides I remembered I had once been her husband. That recollection was then, and is now, inexpressibly odious to me. Moreover, I knew that while she lived I could never be the husband of another and better wife, and though five years my senior—her family and her father had lied to me even in the particular of her age—she was likely to live as long as I, being as robust in frame as she was in firm in mind. Thus, at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless. One night I had been awakened by her yells. Since the medical men pronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up. It was a fiery West Indian night—one of the description that frequently precedes the hurricanes of those climates. Being unable to sleep in bed, I got up and opened the window. The air was like sulphur steams—I could find no refreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed southerly round the room. The sea which I could hear from thence rumbled dull like an earthquake. Black clouds were casting up over it. The moon was setting in the waves, broad and red like a hot cannon-ball. She threw her last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest. I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and my ears were filled with the curses the maniacs still shrieked out. Wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with such language, no professed harlot ever had a foul of vocabulary than she, though two rooms off I heard every word—the thin partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish cries. This life, said I at last, is hell. This is the air—those are the sounds of the bottomless pit. I have a right to deliver myself from it, if I can. The sufferings of this mortal state will leave me with the heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul. Of the fanatics burning eternity I have no fear. There is not a future state worse than this present one. Let me break away, and go home to God." I said this whilst I knelt down at, and unlocked a trunk which contained a brace of loaded pistols. I meant to shoot myself. I only entertained the intention for a moment. For not being insane, the crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair, which had originated the wish and design of self-destruction, was passed in a second. A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through the open casement. The storm broke, streamed, thundered, blazed, and the air grew pure. I then framed and fixed a resolution. While I walked under the dripping orange trees of my wet garden, and amongst its drenched pomegranates and pineapples, and while the refledged dawn of the tropics kindled round me, I reasoned thus, Jane, and now listen, for it was true wisdom that consoled me in that hour, and showed me the right path to follow. The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed leaves, and the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty. My heart, dried up and scorched for a long time, swelled to the tone and filled with living blood. My being longed for renewal, my soul thirsted for a pure draft. I saw hope revive, and felt regeneration possible. From a flowery arch at the bottom of my garden I gazed over the sea, bluer than the sky, the old world was beyond, clear prospects opened thus. Go, said Hope, and live again in Europe. There it is not known what a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you. You may take the maniac with you to England, confine her with due attendance and precautions at Thornfield, then travel yourself to what climb you will, and form what new tie you like. That woman who has so abused your longsuffering, so sullied your name, so outraged your honour, so blighted your youth is not your wife, nor are you her husband. See that she is cared for as her condition demands, and you have done all that God and humanity require of you. Let her identity, her connection with yourself, be buried in oblivion. You are bound to impart them to no living being. Place her in safety and comfort, shelter her degradation with secrecy, and leave her. I acted precisely on the suggestion. My father and brother had not made my marriage known to their acquaintance, because in the very first letter I wrote to apprise them of the union, having already begun to experience extreme disgust of its consequences, and from the family, character and constitution, seeing a hideous future opening to me, I added an urgent charge to keep it secret, and very soon the infamous conduct of the wife my father had selected for me, was such as to make him blush to own her as his daughter-in-law. Far from desiring to publish the connection, he became as anxious to conceal it as myself. To England, then, I conveyed her—a fearful voyage I had with such a monster in the vessel. Glad was I when I at last got her to Thornfield, and saw her safely lodged in that third-story room, of whose secret inner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild beast's den, her goblin's cell. I had some trouble in finding an attendant for her, as it was necessary to select one on whose fidelity dependence could be placed, for her ravings would inevitably betray my secret. Besides, she had lucid intervals of days, sometimes weeks, which she filled up with abuse of me. Had last I hired Grace Poole from the Grimsby Retreat. She and the surgeon, Carter, who dressed Mason's wounds that night, he was stabbed and worried, are the only two I have ever admitted to my confidence. Miss Fairfax may indeed have suspected something, but she could have gained no precise knowledge as to facts. Grace Haas, on the whole, proved a good keeper, though owinged partly to a fault of her own, of which it appears nothing can cure her, and which is incident to her harassing profession. Her vigilance has been more than once lulled and baffled. The lunatic is both cunning and malignant. She has never failed to take advantage of a guardian's temporary lapses, wants to secrete the knife with which she stabbed her brother, and twice to possess herself of the key of her cell, and issue therefrom in the night-time. On the first of these occasions she perpetrated the attempt to burn me in my bed. On the second she paid that ghastly visit to you. I thank Providence, who watched over you, that she then spent her fury on your wedding apparel, which perhaps brought back vague reminiscences of her own bridal days. But on what might have happened, I cannot endure to reflect. When I think of the thing which flew at my throat this morning, hanging its black and scarlet visage over the nest of my dove, my blood-curdles. "'And what, sir?' I asked, while he paused. Did you do when you had settled her here? Where did you go?' "'What did I do, Jane? I transformed myself into a will of the wisp. Where did I go? I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the March spirit. I sought the continent, and went devious through all its lands. My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent woman whom I could love, a contrast to the fury I left at Thornfield. But you could not marry, sir.' I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought. It was not my original intention to deceive as I have deceived you. I meant to tell my tale plainly, and make my proposals openly, and it appeared to me so absolutely rational that I should be considered free to love and be loved. I never doubted some woman might be found willing and able to understand my case, and accept me in spite of the curse with which I was burdened." "'Well, sir?' When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You open your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless movement, as if answers and speech did not flow fast enough for you, and you wanted to read the tablet of one's heart. But before I go on, tell me what you mean by your—'well, sir.' It is a small phrase very frequent with you, and which many a time has drawn me on and on through interminable talk. I don't very well know why." "'I mean, what next? How did you proceed? What came of such an event?' "'Precisely. And what do you wish to know now?' "'Whether you found any one you liked, whether you asked her to marry you, and what she said.' "'I can tell you whether I found any one I liked, and whether I asked her to marry me, but what she said is yet to be recorded in the Book of Fate. For ten long years I roved about, living first in one capital than another, sometimes in St. Petersburg—oftener in Paris, occasionally in Rome, Naples, Florence—provided with plenty of money in the passport of an old name, I could choose my own society. No circles were closed against me. I sought my ideal of a woman amongst English ladies, French countesses, Italian senoras, and German grafinine. I could not find her. Sometimes for a fleeting moment I thought I caught a glance, heard a tone, beheld a form which announced the realisation of my dream, but I was presently undeserved. You are not to suppose that I desired perfection, either of mind or person. I longed only for what suited me, for the antipodes of the crail, and I longed vainly. Amongst them all I found not one, whom, and I been ever so free, I, warned as I was of the risks, the horrors, the loathings of incongruous unions, would have asked to marry me. Disappointment made me reckless. I tried dissipation, never debauchery, that I hated, and hate, that was my Indian Messalina's attribute. Rooted disgust at it and her restrained me much, even in pleasure. Any enjoyment that bordered on riot seemed to approach me to her and her vices, and I eschewed it. Yet I could not live alone, so I tried the companionship of mistresses. The first I chose was Feline Varenne, another of those steps would make a man spurn himself when he recalls them. You already know what she was, and how my liaison with her terminated. She had two successors, an Italian, Giacinta, and a German, Clara, both considered singularly handsome. What was their beauty to me in a few weeks? Giacinta was unprincipled and violent, I tied of her in three months. Clara was honest and quiet, but heavy, mindless, and unimpressible, not one wit to my taste. I was glad to give her a sufficient sum to set her up in a good line of business, and so get decently rid of her. But Jane, I see by your face you are not forming a very favourable opinion of me just now. You think me an unfeeling, loose, principled rake, don't you?" I don't like you so well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir. Did it not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way, first with one mistress and then another? You talk of it as a mere matter of course. It was with me, and I did not like it. It was a groveling fashion of existence. I should never like to return to it. Hiring a mistress is the next worst thing to buying a slave. Both are often by nature and always by position inferior, and to live familiarly with inferiors is degrading. I now hate the recollection of the time I passed with Saline, Giacinta, and Clara. I felt the truth of those words, and I drew from them the certain inference that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching that had ever been instilled into me, as, under any context, with any justification, through any temptation, to become the successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory. I did not give utterance to this conviction. It was enough to feel it. I impressed it on my heart, that it might remain there to serve me as aid in the time of trial. Now, Jane, why don't you say, well, sir? I have not done. You are looking grave. You disapprove of me still, I see. But let me come to the point. Last January, rid of all mistresses, in a harsh, bitter frame of mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely life, corroded with disappointment, sourly disposed against all men, and especially against all womankind, for I began to regard the notion of an intellectual, faithful, loving woman as a mere dream, recalled by business I came back to England. On a frosty winter afternoon I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall, a borrowed 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 arbiters of my life, my genius for good or evil, waited there and humble guise. I did not know it even when, on the occasion of Mesraux'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 scents, stolen to my frame. It was well I had learnt that this elf must return to me, that it belonged to my house down below, where I could not have felt it pass away from under my hand and seen it vanish behind the dim hedge without singular regret. I heard you come home that night, Jane, though probably you were not aware that I thought of you or watched for you. The next day I observed you, myself unseen, for half an hour while you played with Adele in the gallery. It was a snowy day, I recollect, and you could not go out of doors. I was in my room. The door was ajar. I could both listen and watch. Adele claimed you were out of detention for a while. Yet I fancied your thoughts or 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 of 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 is a pleasurable illumination in your eye occasionally, a soft excitement into 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 too 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 green, flowery Eden in my brain. But without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough track 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. Air long I found you full of strange contrasts. Your garbant 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 solicism 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, cross-master Jane, for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquilized 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 peek into quaintance. Besides, I was for a while troubled with the 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, and 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 to do 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 sureer, 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 an unutterable misery and half an 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, solemn passion is conceived in my heart. It leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about to 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 as 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, open to you plainly my life of agony, describe to you my hunger in thirst after a higher and worthier existence, shown to you not my resolution—that word is weak—but my resist this bent to love faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well loved in return. Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity, and to give me yours. Jane, give it me now. A pause. Why are you silent, Jane? I was experiencing an ordeal. A hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment, full of struggle, blackness, burning. Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved, and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped, and I must renounce love and idol. One drear word comprised my intolerable duty—depart. Jane, you understand what I want to view—just this promise—I will be yours, Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester, I will not be yours. Jane, recommends tea, 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 a strange rapidly and completely. Oh, Jane, this is bitter—this—this is wicked—it would be wicked not to love me. It would to obey you. A wild look raised his brows, crossed his features. He rose, but he forbore 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? Wear a turn for a companion, and for some hope. Do as I do. Trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet again there. Then you will not yield. No. Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed. His voice rose. I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil. Then you snatch love and innocence from me. You fling me back on lust for a passion, vice for an occupation. Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for myself. We were born to strive and endure. You as well as I, do so. You will forget me before I forget you. You make me a liar by such language. You sully my honour. I declared I could not change. You tell me to my face I shall change soon. And what a distortion in your judgment, what a perversity in your ideas is proved by your conduct. Is it better to drive a fellow creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach? For you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me." This was true. And while he spoke, my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime and 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 rigor, 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 vower me with his flaming glance. Physically I felt at that moment powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and glow of 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 grip was painful, and my overtaxed 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 up tore, if I crushed her? Consider that I! 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. Conquerer 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 allude the grasp like an essence. You will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh, Jane! Oh! Come! Jane! Come! As he said to 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 allude 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, all or nothing to you. What unutterable pathos within 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, a wrecked he sprang, he held his arms out, but I evaded the embrace, and at once, quitted the room. Farewell was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added, farewell, for ever. That night I never thought to sleep, but a slumber fell on me as soon as I lay down in bed. I was transported and thought to the scenes of childhood. I dreamt I lay in the red room at Gateshead, that the night was dark and my mind impressed with strange fears. The light that had long ago 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 vapour, she is about to sever. I watched her come. I watched with the strangest anticipation, as though some word of doom were to be written on her disc. She broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud. Her 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 translike 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 brides who had melted in air. The other articles I made up in a parcel. My purse, containing twenty shillings, it was all I had. I put in my pocket. I tied on my straw bonnet, pinned my shawl, took the parcel and my slippers, which I would not put on yet, and stole from my room. Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax! I whispered as I glided past her door. Farewell, my darling Adele! I said as I glanced toward the nursery. No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace her. I had to deceive a fine ear, for what I knew it might now be listening. I would have got past Mr. Rochester's chamber without a pause, but my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced to stop also. No sleep was there. The inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall, and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was a heaven, a temporary heaven, in this room for me if I chose. I had but to go in and to say, Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till death, and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought of this. The kind master who could not sleep now was waiting with the patience for day. He would send for me in the morning. I should be gone. He would have me sought for, vainly. He would feel himself forsaken, his love rejected. He would suffer, perhaps grow desperate. I thought of this, too. My hand moved towards the lock. I caught it back, and glided on. Drarily I wound my way downstairs. I knew what I had to do, and I did it mechanically. I sought the key of the side door in the kitchen. I sought, too, a file of oil and a feather. I oiled the key and the lock. I got some water. I got some bread, for perhaps I should have to walk far, and my strength, sorely shaken of late, must not break down. All this I did without one sound. I opened the door, passed out, shut it softly. Dim dawn glimmered in the yard. The great gates were closed and locked, but a wicked in one of them was only latched. Through that I departed. It, too, I shut, and now I was out of Thornfield. A mile off beyond the fields lay a road which stretched in the contrary direction to Milcott, a road I had never travelled, but often noticed, and wondered where it led. Thither I bent my steps. No reflection was to be allowed now. Not one glanced was to be cast back. Not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly-sweet, so deadly-sad, that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank—something like the world when the deluge was gone by. I skirted fields and hedges and lanes to left a sunrise. I believe it was a lovely summer morning. I know my shoes, which I had put on when I left the house, was soon wet with dew. But I looked neither to rising sun nor smiling sky nor wakening nature. He who was taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold, thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block and axe-edge, of the dissevement of bone and vein, of the grave gaping at the end. And I thought of drear flight and homeless wandering. And oh! With agony I thought of what I left. I could not help it. I thought of him now, in his room, watching the sunrise, hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him and be his. I longed to be his. I panted to return. It was not too late. I could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement. As yet my flight I was sure was undiscovered. I could go back and be his comforter, his pride, his redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin. With that fear of his self-abandonment, far worse than my abandonment, how it goaded me. It was a barbed arrow-head in my breast. It tore me when I tried to extract it. It sickened me when remembrance thrust it farther in. Birds began singing in break and cops. Birds were faithful to their mates. Birds were emblems of love. What was I? In the midst of my pain of heart and frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I had no solace from self-approbation, none even from self-respect. I had injured, wounded, left by master. I was hateful in my own eyes. Still I could not turn, nor retrace one step. God must have led me on. As to my own will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled the other. I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way, fast, fast I went like one delirious. Her weakness, beginning inwardly, extending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell. I lay on the ground some minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf. I had some fear, or hope, that here I should die. But I was soon up, crawling forwards on my hands and knees, and then again raised to my feet, as eager and as determined as ever to reach the road. When I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under a hedge, and while I sat, I heard wheels and saw a coach come on. I stood up and lifted my hand. It stopped. I asked where it was going. The driver named a place a long way off, where I was sure Mr. Rochester had no connections. I asked for what sum he would take me there. He said thirty shillings. I answered I had, but twenty. Well, he would try to make it do. He further gave me leave to get into the inside as the vehicle was empty. I entered, was shut in, and it rolled on its way. Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt. May your eyes never shed such stormy, scolding, heart-rung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised, as in that hour left my lips. For never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love." CHAPTER XXVIII It is a summer evening. The coachman has set me down at a place called Whitcross. He could take me no farther for the sum I had given, and I was not possessed of another shilling in the world. The coach is a mile off by this time. I am alone. At this moment I discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the pocket of the coach, where I had placed it for safety. There it remains, there it must remain. And now I am absolutely destitute. Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet. It is but a stone pillar set up where four roads meet, whitewashed, I suppose, to be more obvious at a distance and in darkness. Four arms spring from its summit, the nearest town to which this point is, according to the inscription, distant ten miles, the farthest above twenty. From the well-known names of these towns I learn in what county I have lighted, a north midland shire, dusk with moorland, ridged with mountain, this I see. There are great moors behind and on each hand of me, there are waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at my feet. The population here must be thin, and I see no passengers on these roads. They stretch out east, west, north, and south, white, broad, lonely. They are all cut in the moor, and the heather grows deep and wild to their very verge. Yet a chance traveller might pass by, and I wish no eye to see me now. Strangers would wonder what I am doing, lingering here at the sign-post, evidently objectless and lost. I might be questioned. I could give no answer but what would sound incredible in excite suspicion. Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment. Not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are. None that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me. I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature. I will seek a breast and ask repose. I struck straight into the heath. I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moor side. I waded knee-deep in its dark growth. I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of moor were about me. The crag protected my head. The sky was over that. Sometime past before I felt tranquil even here, I had a vague dread that wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or poacher might discover me. Of a gust of wind swept the waist, I looked up, fearing it was the rush of a bull. If a plover whistled, I imagined it a man. Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however, and calmed by the deep silence that reigned as evening declined at nightfall, I took confidence. As yet I had not thought, I had only listened, watched, dreaded. Now I regained the faculty of reflection. What was I to do? Where to go? Oh, intolerable questions, when I could do nothing, and go nowhere! When a long way must yet be measured by my weary, trembling limbs before I could reach human habitation, when cold charity must be entreated before I could get a lodging, reluctant sympathy importuned almost certain repulse incurred, before my tale could be listened to, or one of my once relieved. I touched the heath. It was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the summer day. I looked at the sky. It was pure, a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm-ridge. The dew fell, but with propitious softness, no breeze whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and good. I thought she loved me, outcast as I was, and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness. Tonight at least I would be her guest, as I was her child. My mother would lodge me without money and without price. I had one morsel of bread, yet, the remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed through at noon with a stray penny, my last coin. I saw ripe bilberries gleaming here and there, like jet beads in the heath. I gathered a handful and ate them with the bread. My hunger, sharp before, was, if not satisfied, appeased by this hermit's meal. I said my evening prayers at its conclusion, and then chose my couch. Beside the crag the heath was very deep. When I lay down my feet were buried in it, rising high on each side, it left only a narrow space for the night air to invade. I folded my shawl double, and spread it over me for a coverlet. A low mossy swell was my pillow. Thus lodged I was not, at least, at the commencement of the night, cold. My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. It plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven cords. It trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom. It bemoaned him with bitter pity. It demanded him with ceaseless longing, and impotent as a bird with both wings broken, it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him. Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was come, and her planets were risen—a safe, still night—too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere, but certainly we feel his presence most when his works are on the grandest scale spread before us, and it is in the unclouded night sky where his worlds wheel their silent course that we read clearest his infinitude, his omnipotence, his omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty milky way. Remembering what it was, what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light, I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of his efficiency to save what he had made. Convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving. The source of life was also the saviour of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe. He was God's, and by God would he be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill, and ere long in sleep, forgot sorrow. But next day, want came to me pale and bare. Long after the little birds had left their nests, long after bees had come in the sweet prime of day to gather the heath-honey before the dew was dried, when the long morning shadows were curtailed, and the sun filled earth and sky, I got up, and I looked round me. What a still, hot, perfect day! What a golden desert this spreading moor! Everywhere sunshine! I wished I could live in it, and on it. I saw a lizard run over the crag. I saw a bee busy among the sweet bilberries. I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard, that I might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter here. But I was a human being, and had a human being's wants. I must not linger where there was nothing to supply them. I rose. I looked back at the bed I had left. Hopeless of the future I wished but this, that my maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept, and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness. Life, however, was yet in my possession, with all its requirements and pains and responsibilities. The burden must be carried. The want provided for, the suffering endured, the responsibility fulfilled. I set out. Which cross regained, I followed a road which led from the sun, now fervent and high. By no other circumstance had I willed to decide my choice. I walked a long time, and when I thought I had nearly done enough, and might conscientiously yield to the fatigue that had almost overpowered me, might relax this forced action, and sitting down on a stone I saw near, submit resistlessly to the apathy that clogged heart and limb. I heard a bell chime, a church bell. I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the romantic hills, whose changes and aspect I had ceased to know to an hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a spire. All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture fields, and cornfields and wood, and a glittering stream ran zigzag through the varied shades of green, the mellowing grain, the somber woodland, the clear and sunny lee. Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to the road before me, I saw a heavily laden wagon laboring up the hill, and not far beyond were two cows and their drover. Human life and human labour were near. I must struggle on, strive to live and bend to toil like the rest. About two o'clock p.m. I entered the village. At the bottom of its one street there was a little shop with some cakes of bread in the window. I coveted a cake of bread. With that refreshment I could perhaps regain a degree of energy. Without it it would be difficult to proceed. The wish to have some strength and some vigor returned to me as soon as I was amongst my fellow-beings. I felt it would be degrading to faint with hunger on the causeway of a hamlet. Had I nothing about me I could offer an exchange for one of those rolls. I considered. I had a small silk handkerchief tied round my throat. I had my gloves. I could hardly tell how men and women in extremities of destitution proceeded. I did not know whether either of these articles would be accepted. Probably they would not, but I must try. I entered the shop. A woman was there. Seeing a respectably dressed person, a lady, as she supposed, she came forward with civility. How could she serve me? I was seized with shame. My tongue would not utter the request I had prepared. I dared not offer her the half-worn gloves, the creased handkerchief. Besides I felt it would be absurd. I only begged permission to sit down a moment as I was tired. Disappointed in the expectation of a customer, she coolly acceded to my request. She pointed to a seat. I sank into it. I felt sorely urged to weep, but conscious how unreasonable such a manifestation would be, I restrained it. Soon I asked her if there were any dressmaker or plain workwoman in the village. Yes, two or three, quite as many as there was employment for. I reflected. I was driven to the point now. I was brought face to face with necessity. I stood in the position of one without a resource, without a friend, without a coin. I must do something. What? I must apply somewhere. Where? Did she know of any place in the neighbourhood where a servant was wanted? Nay, she couldn't say. What was the chief trade in this place? What did most of the people do? Some were farm labourers, a good deal worked at Mr. Oliver's needle-factory and at the foundry. Did Mr. Oliver employ women? Nay, it was men's work. And what do the women do? I nought, was the answer. One does one thing, and some another. Poor folk must get on as they can. She seemed to be tired of my questions. And indeed, what claim had I to importing her? A neighbour or two came in. My chair was evidently wanted. I took leave. I passed up the street, looking as I went at all the houses to the right hand and to the left, but I could discover no protect, nor see an inducement to enter any. I rambled round the hamlet, going sometimes to a little distance and returning again for an hour or more—much exhausted and suffering greatly now for want of food. I turned aside into a lane and sat down under the hedge. Air many minutes had elapsed. I was again on my feet, however, and again searching something—a resource, or at least an informant. A pretty little house stood at the top of the lane with a garden before it, exquisitely neat and brilliantly blooming. I stopped at it. What business had I to approach the white door a touch the glittering knocker? In what way could it possibly be the interest of the inhabitants of that dwelling to serve me? Yet I drew near and knocked. A mild-looking, cleanly attired young woman opened the door. In such a voice as might be expected from a hopeless heart and fainting frame, a voice wretchedly low and faltering. I asked if a servant was wanted here. No," said she,—'we do not keep a servant.' Can you tell me where I could get employment of any kind?' I continued,—'I am a stranger without acquaintance in this place. I want some work, no matter what.' But it was not her business to think for me or to seek place for me. Besides in her eyes how doubtful must have appeared my character, position, tale. She shook her head. She was,—'Sorry, she could give me no information.' And the white door closed, quite gently and civilly, but had shut me out. If she had held it open a little longer, I believe I should have begged a piece of bread, for I was now brought low. I could not bear to return to the sordid village, where besides no prospect of aid was visible, I should have longed rather to deviate to a wood I saw not far off, which appeared in its thick shade to offer inviting shelter. But I was so sick, so weak, so gnawed with nature's cravings. Instinct kept me roaming round abodes where there was a chance of food. Solitude would be no solitude—rest, no rest, while the vulture, hunger, thus sank beak and talons in my side. I junior houses. I left them, and came back again, and again I wandered away, always repelled by the consciousness of having no claim to ask—no right to expect interest in my isolated lot. Meantime the afternoon advanced, while I thus wandered about like a lost and starving dog. In crossing a field I saw the church spire before me—I hastened towards it. Near the church-yard and in the middle of a garden stood a well-built, though small house, which I had no doubt was the parsonage. I remembered that strangers who arrived to place where they have no friends, and who want employment, sometimes apply to the clergyman for introduction and aid. It is the clergyman's function to help—at least with advice—those who wish to help themselves. I seemed to have something like a right to seek counsel here. Renewing then my courage, and gathering my feeble remains of strength, I pushed on. I reached the house, and knocked at the kitchen door. An old woman opened. I asked, was this the parsonage? Yes. Was the clergyman in? No. What he be in soon? No, he was gone from home. To a distance. Not so far—happen three mile—he had been called away by the sudden death of his father. He was at Marsh End now, and would very likely stay there a fortnight longer. Was there any lady of the house? Nay! There was naught but her, and she was housekeeper. And of her, reader, I could not bear to ask the relief for want of which I was sinking. I could not yet beg, and again I crawled away. Once more I took off my handkerchief. Once more I thought of the cakes of bread in the little shop. Oh, for but a crust! For but one mouthful to allay the pang of famine! Instinctively I turned my face again to the village. I found the shop again, and I went in. And though others were there besides the woman I ventured the request, would she give me a role for this handkerchief? She looked at me with evident suspicion. Nay! She never sold stuffer that way. Almost desperate I asked for half a cake. She again refused. How could she tell where I had got the handkerchief? She said. Would she take my gloves? No! What could she do with them? Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past, but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I elude. The moral degradation, blend with the physical suffering, form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on. I blamed none of those who repulsed me. I felt it was what was to be expected, and what could not be helped. An ordinary beggar is frequently an object of suspicion. A well-dressed beggar, inevitably so. To be sure what I begged was employment. But whose business was it to provide me with employment? Not certainly that of persons who saw me then for the first time, and who knew nothing about my character. And as to the woman who would not take my handkerchief in exchange for her bread, but she was right, if the offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable. Let me condense now. I am sick of the subject. How little before dark I passed a farmhouse at the open door of which the farmer was sitting, eating his supper of bread and cheese. I stopped and said, "'Will you give me a piece of bread?' for I am very hungry.' He cast on me a glance of surprise, but without answering he cut a thick slice from his loaf and gave it to me. I imagine he did not think I was a beggar, but only an eccentric sort of lady who had taken a fancy to his brown loaf. As soon as I was out of sight of his house I sat down and ate it. I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sort it in the wood I had before alluded to. But my night was wretched, my rest broken. The ground was damp, the air cold. Besides, intruders passed near me more than once, and I had again and again to change my quarters. No sense of safety or tranquility befriended me. Towards morning it rained, the whole of the following day was wet. Do not ask me, reader, to give a minute account of that day. As before I sought work, as before I was repulsed, as before I starved. But once did food pass my lips. At the door of a cottage I saw a little girl about to throw a mess of cold porridge into a pig-trough. "'Will you give me that?' I asked. She stared at me. "'Mother,' she exclaimed, "'there is a woman who wants me to give her these porridge.' "'Well, lass,' replied a voice within, "'give at her if she's a beggar, to pig don't want it.' The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it ravenously. As the wet twilight deepened I stopped in a solitary bridal path which I had been pursuing an hour or more. "'My strength is quite failing me,' I said in a soliloquy. "'I feel I cannot go much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night? While the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold drenched ground? I fear I cannot do otherwise, for who will receive me? But it will be very dreadful with this feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this sense of desolation, this total prostration of hope. In all likelihood, though, I should die before morning. And why cannot I reconcile myself to the prospect of death? Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life? Because I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester is living. And then to die of want and cold is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively. Oh, Providence, sustain me a little longer! Aid! Direct me!" My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape. I saw I had strayed far from the village. It was quite out of sight. The very cultivation surrounding it had disappeared. I had, by crossways and by-paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland, and now only few fields almost as wild and unproductive as the heath from which they were scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and the dusky hill. Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or a frequented road, I reflected, and far better that crows and ravens, if any ravens there be in these regions, should pick my flesh from my bones, than that they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper's grave. To the hill then I turned. I reached it. It remained now only to find a hollow where I could lie down, and feel at least hidden, if not secure. But all the surface of the waste looked level. It showed no variation but of tint. Green where rash and moss overgrew the marshes, black where the dry soil bore only heath. Dark as it was getting, I could still see these changes, though but as mere alternations of light and shade, for colour had faded with the daylight. My eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the moor edge, vanishing amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in among the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up. That, as an ignis fatus, was my first thought, and I expected it would soon vanish. It burnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding nor advancing. Is it then a bonfire just kindled, I questioned. I watched to see whether it would spread, but no, as it did not diminish, so it did not enlarge. It may be a candle and a house, I then conjectured, but if so I can never reach it, it is much too far away, and were it within a yard of me, what would it avail? I should but knock at the door to have it shut in my face. And I sank down where I stood and hid my face against the ground. I lay still a while. The night wind swept over the hill and over me, and died moaning in the distance. The rain fell fast, wettingly afresh to the skin. Could I but have stiffened to the still frost, the friendly numbness of death? It might have pelted on, I should not have felt it, but my yet living flesh shuddered at its chilling influence. I rose ere long. The light was yet there, shining dim but constant through the rain. I tried to walk again, I dragged my exhausted limbs slowly towards it. It led me a slant over the hill, through a wide bog, which would have been impassable in winter and was splashy and shaking even now in the height of summer. Here I fell twice, but as often I rose and rallied my faculties. This light was my forlorn hope. I must gain it. When across the marsh I saw a trace of white over the moor. I approached it. It was a road or a track. It led straight up to the light which now beamed from a sort of knoll, a midst of clump of trees—fers, apparently, from what I could distinguish of the character of their forms and foliage to the gloom. My star vanished as I drew near, some obstacle it intervened between me and it. I put out my hand to feel the dark mass before me. I discriminated the rough stones of a low wall, above it something like palisades, and within a high and prickly hedge. I groped on. Again a whitish object gleamed before me. It was a gate, a wicket. It moved on its hinges as I touched it. On each side stood a sable bush, holly, or ewe. Entering the gate and passing the shrubs the silhouette of a house rose to view, black, low, and rather long, but the guiding light shone nowhere, awe's obscurity. Were the inmates retired to rest? I feared it must be so. In seeking the door I turned an angle. There shot out the friendly gleam again, from the lozenged panes of a very small lattice-window, within a foot of the ground, made still smaller by the growth of ivy or some other creeping plant, whose leaves clustered thick over the portion of the house wall in which it was set. The aperture was so screened and narrow that curtain or shutter had been deemed unnecessary, and when I stooped down and put aside the spray of foliage shooting over it, I could see all within. I could see clearly a room with a sanded floor, clean, scoured, a dresser of walnut with pewter plates ranged in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a glowing peat-fire. I could see a clock, a white deal-table, some chairs. The candle whose ray had been my beacon burnt on the table, and by its light an elderly woman, somewhat rough-looking, but scrupulously clean, like all about her, was knitting a stocking. I noticed these objects cursorily only. In them there was nothing extraordinary. A group of more interest appeared near the hearth, sitting still amidst the rosy peace and warmth of using it. Two young graceful women, ladies in every point, sat, one in a low rocking chair, the other on a lower stool. Both wore deep mourning of crepe and bombazine, which somber garb singularly set off very fair necks and faces. A large old-pointer dog rested its massive head on the knee of one girl, in the lap of the other was cushioned a black cat. A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants. Who were they? They could not be the daughters of the elderly person at the table, for she looked like a rustic, and they were all delicacy and cultivation. I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs, and yet, as I gazed on them, I seemed intimate with every lineament. I cannot call them handsome—they were too pale and grave for the word—as they each bent over a book, they looked thoughtful almost to severity. A stand between them supported a second candle and two great volumes, to which they frequently referred, comparing them seemingly with the smaller books they held in their hands, like people consulting a dictionary to aid them in the task of translation. This scene was as silent as if all the figures had been shadows, and the file at apartment a picture. So hushed was it, I could hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock tick in its obscure corner, and I even fancied I could distinguish the click-a-click of the woman's knitting needles. When therefore a voice broke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough to me. "'Listen, Diana,' said one of the absorbed students, "'France and old Daniel are together in the night-time, and France is telling a dream from which he is awakened in terror. Listen!' And in a low voice she read something, of which not one word was intelligible to me, for it was in an unknown tongue, neither French nor Latin. Whether it were Greek or German, I could not tell. "'That is strong,' she said, when she had finished, "'I relish it.' The other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated, while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read. At a later day I knew the language and the book, therefore I will hear quote the line, though when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on sounding brass to me, conveying no meaning." "'Dat trat her vor einer, an zu sehen wie die Sterne nacht.' "'Good, good,' she exclaimed, while her darkened deep-eye sparkled. "'There you have a dim and mighty-arch angel, fitly set before you. The line is with a hundred pages of vastien. Ich wager die Gedanken in der Schale meines Sohnes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimm's. I like it.' Both were again silent. "'Is there only country where they talk of that way?' said the old woman, looking up from her knitting. "'Yes, Hannah, a far larger country than England, where they talk in no other way.' "'Well, for sure case, I know not how they can understand to one to the other, and if either you went over there, you could tell what they said, I guess. You could probably tell something of what they said, but not all, for we are not as clever as you think us, Hannah. We don't speak German, and we cannot read it without a dictionary to help us. And what good does it do you? We mean to teach it some time, or at least the elements, as they say, and then we shall get more money than we do now. Very like. But give over a study, and you've done enough for to-night. I think we have. At least I'm tired. Mary, are you?' Mortally. After all, it's tough work, fagging away at a language with no master but a lexicon. It is, especially, such a language as this crabbed but glorious Deutsch. I wonder when St. John will come home. Surely he will not be long now. It is just ten, looking at a little gold watch she drew from her girdle. It rains fast, Hannah. Will you have the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?' The woman rose. She opened a door, through which I dimly saw a passage. Soon I heard her stir a fire, and in a room, she presently came back. "'Ah, children,' said she, "'it fair troubles me to go into yonderoom now. It looks so lonesome, with a chair empty, and set back in a corner.' She wiped her eyes with her apron. The two girls, grave before, looked sad now. "'But he is in a better place,' continued Hannah. We shouldn't wish him here again. And then nobody need to have a quieter death, nor he had.' "'You say he never mentioned us?' inquired one of the ladies. "'He hadn't time, Bern. He was gone in a minute, was your father. He had been a bit ailing like the day before, but not to signify, and when Mr. St. John asked if he would like either of you to be sent for, he fair laughed at him. He began again with a bit of heaviness in his head the next day, let his fortnight sin, and he went to sleep, and never wakened. He were almost stark when your brother went into the chamber, and found him. "'Ah, children, that's to last to the old stock, for ye and Mr. St. John is of like a different sort to them, it's gone. For all your mother wore Mitchie your way, and almost his book learned. She would a-picture ye, Mary. Diana is more like your father.' I thought them so similar, I could not tell where the old servant, for such I now concluded her to be, saw the difference. Both were fair complexioned and slendly made. Both possessed faces full of distinction and intelligence. One, to be sure, had hair a shade darker than the other, and there was a difference in their style of wearing it. Mary's pale brown locks were parted and braided smooth. Diana's dusky attresses covered her neck with thick curls. The clock struck ten. "'He'll want your supper, I'm sure,' observed Hannah, and so will Mr. St. John when he comes in.' And she proceeded to prepare the meal. The ladies rose. They seemed about to withdraw to the parlour. Till this moment I had been so intent on watching them, their appearance and conversation had excited in me so keen an interest, I had half forgotten my own wretched position. Now it recurred to me. More desolate, more desperate than ever it seemed from contrast. And how impossible did it appear to touch the inmates of this house with concern on my behalf, to make them believe in the truth of my wants and woes, to induce them to vouchsafe a rest for my wanderings. As I groped out the door and knocked at it hesitatingly, I felt that last idea to me a mere chimera. Hannah opened. "'What do you want?' she inquired in a voice of surprise, as she surveyed me by the light of the candle she held. "'May I speak to your mistresses?' I said. "'You'd better tell me what you have to say to them. Where do you come from?' "'I am a stranger. What is your business here at this hour? I want to night's shelter in an out-house or anywhere, and a morsel of bread to eat.' The trust, the very feeling I dreaded, appeared in Hannah's face. "'I'll give you a piece of bread,' she said after a pause. "'But we can't take in a vagrant to lodge, it isn't likely.' "'Do let me speak to your mistresses.' "'No, not I. What can they do for you? You should not be roving about now. It looks very ill.' "'But where shall I go, if you drive me away? What shall I do? Oh, I'll warrant you know where to go and what to do. And you don't do wrong, that's all. Here is a penny. Now go.' "'A penny cannot feed me, and I have no strength to go farther. Don't shut the door. Oh, don't, for God's sake. I must. The rain is driving in. Tell the young ladies. Let me see them. "'Indeed I will not. You are not what you ought to be, or you wouldn't make such a noise. Move off. But I must die if I am turned away. Not you. I'm feared you'd have some ill plans again that brings you about folks' houses at this time and night. If you've any followers—housebreakers, or such like—anywhere near, you may tell them we are not by ourselves in the house. We have a gentleman and dogs and guns.' Here the honest but inflexible servant clapped the door too, and bolted it within. This was the climax—a pang of exquisite suffering, a throw of true despair, rent and heaved my heart. One out indeed I was. Not another step could I stir. I sank on the wet doorstep. I groaned. I rung my hands. I wept in utter anguish. Oh, this spectre of death! Oh, this last hour approaching in such horror! Alas! This isolation! This banishment from my kind! Not only the anchor of hope, but the footing of fortitude was gone—at least for a moment. At the last I soon endeavored to regain. I can but die, I said, and I believe in God. Let me try to wait his will and silence. These words I not only thought but uttered, and thrusting back all my misery into my heart, I made an effort to compel it to remain there, dumb and still. All men must die, said a voice quite close at hand, but all are not condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as yours would be if you perished here of want. Who or what speaks? I asked, terrified at the unexpected sound, and incapable now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid. A form was near. What form? The pitch-dark night, and my ineffable division prevented me from distinguishing. With a loud, long knock, the newcomer appealed to the door. Is it you, Mr. St. John? cried Hannah. Yes, yes, open quickly. Well, how wet and cold you must be! Such a wild night as it is! Come in, your sisters are quite uneasy about you, and I believe there are bad folks about. There has been a beggar-woman. I declare, she is not gone yet. Lay down there! Get up for shame! Move off, I say!" Hush, Hannah! I have a word to say to the woman. You have done your duty in excluding. Now let me do mine in admitting her. I was near and listened to both you and her. I think this is a peculiar case. I must at least examine into it. Young woman, rise and pass before me into the house. With difficulty I obeyed him. Presently I stood within that clean, bright kitchen, on the very half, trembling, sickening, conscious of an aspect in the last degree ghastly, wild and weather-beaten. The two ladies, their brother, Mr. Singin, the old servant, were all gazing at me. Singin, who is it? I heard one ask. I cannot tell. I found her at the door, was the reply. She does look white, said Hannah. As white as clay or death, was responded, she will fall, let her sit. And indeed, my head swam. I dropped, but a chair received me. I still possessed my senses, though just now I could not speak. Perhaps a little water would restore her. Hannah fetched some. But she is worn to nothing. How very thin and how very bloodless! A mere spectre! Is she ill or only famished? Famished, I think. Hannah, is that milk? Give it me and a piece of bread. Diana! I knew her by the long curls which I saw drooping between me and the fire as she bent over me. Broke some bread, dipped it in milk, and put it to my lips. Her face was near mine. I saw there was pity in it, and I felt sympathy in her hurried breathing. In her simple words, too, the same balm-like emotion spoke. Try to eat. Yes, try!" repeated Mary gently, and Mary's hand removed my sodden bonnet and lifted my head. I tasted what they offered me, feebly at first, eagerly soon. Not too much at first, restrain her, said the brother. She has had enough. And he withdrew the cup of milk and the plate of bread. A little more, singeon, look at the avidity in her eyes. No more at present, sister. Why if she can speak now? Ask her her name. I felt I could speak, and I answered. My name is Jane Elliot. Anxious as ever to avoid discovery, I had before resolved to assume an alias. And where do you live? Where are your friends? I was silent. Can we send for any one you know? I shook my head. What account can you give of yourself? Somehow, now that I had once crossed the threshold of this house, and once was brought face to face with its owners, I felt no longer outcast, vagrant, and disowned by the wide world. I dared to put off the mendicant, to resume my natural manner and character. I began once more to know myself, and when Mr. singeon demanded an account, which at present I was far too weak to render, I said after a brief pause, Sir, I can give you no details to-night. But what, then, said he, do you expect me to do for you? Nothing, I replied. My strength sufficed but for short answers. Diana took the word. Do you mean, she asked, that we have now given you what age you require, and that we may dismiss you to the more in the rainy night? I looked at her. She had, I thought, a remarkable countenance, instinct both with power and goodness. I took sudden courage. Answering her compassionate gaze with a smile, I said, I will trust you. If I were a masterless and stray dog, I know that she would not turn me from your hearth to-night. As it is, I really have no fear. Do with me and for me as you like, but excuse me from much discourse. My breath is short. I feel a spasm when I speak. All three surveyed me, and all three were silent. Hannah," said Mr. St. John, at last, let us sit there at present and ask her no questions. In ten minutes more give her the remainder of that milk and bread. Mary and Diana let us go into the parlour and talk the matter over." They withdrew. Very soon one of the ladies returned. I could not tell which. A kind of pleasant stupor was stealing over me as I sat by the genial fire. In an undertone she gave some directions to Hannah. Air-long with the servants' aid I can try to mount a staircase. My dripping clothes were removed. Soon a warm dry bed received me. I thanked God, experienced amidst unutterable exhaustion a glow of grateful joy, and slept. End of CHAPTER XXVIII