 20 I had forgotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also to let down my window blind. The consequence was that when the moon, which was full and bright, for the night was fine, came in her course to that space in the sky opposite my casement, and looked in at me through the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me. Awaking in the dead of night, I opened my eyes on her disc, silver-white and crystal-clear. It was beautiful, but too solemn. I half rose, and stretched my arm to draw the curtain. Good God! what a cry! The night, its silence, its rest, was rent in twain by a savage, a sharp, a shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield Hall. My pulse stopped, my heart stood still, my stretched arm was paralyzed. The cry died, and was not renewed. Indeed, whatever being uttered that fearful shriek could not soon repeat it, not the widest-winged condor on the Andes could, twice in succession, send out such a yell from the cloud shrouding his eye-ry. The thing delivering such utterance must rest ere it could repeat the effort. It came out of the third story, for it passed overhead. And overhead, yes, in the room just above my chamber-ceiling, I now heard a struggle, a deadly one at scene from the noise, and a half-smothered voice shouted, Help! help! help! three times rapidly. Will no one come? it cried. And then, while the staggering and stamping went on wildly, I distinguished through plank and plaster. Rochester! Rochester! For God's sake, come! A chamber-door opened, some one ran, or rushed along the gallery. Another step stamped on the flooring above, and something fell, and there was silence. I had put on some clothes, though horror shook all my limbs. I issued from my apartment. The sleepers were all aroused, ejaculations, terrified murmurs sounded in every room, door after door unclosed. One looked out, and another looked out, the gallery filled. Gentlemen and ladies alike had quitted their beds, and— Oh! What is it? Who is hurt? What has happened? Fetch a light! Is it fire? Are there robbers? Where shall we run? was demanded confusedly on all hands. Not for the moonlight, they would have been in complete darkness. They ran to and fro, they crowded together, some sobbed, some stumbled, the confusion was inextricable. Where the devil is Rochester? cried Colonel Dent. I cannot find him in his bed. Here! Here! was shouted in return. Be composed, all of you, I am coming. And the door at the end of the gallery opened, and Mr. Rochester advanced with a candle. He had just descended from the upper story. One of the ladies ran to him directly. She seized his arm. It was Miss Ingram. What awful event has taken place! said she. Speak! Let us know the worst at once! But don't pull me down, or strangle me! he replied, for the Mrs. Eshton were clinging about him now, and the two dowagers and vast white wrappers were bearing down on him like ships in full sail. All right, all's right! he cried. It's a mere rehearsal of much do about nothing. Please keep off, or I shall wax dangerous." And dangerous, he looked. His black eyes darted sparks. Calming himself by an effort, he added. A servant has had the nightmare, that is all. She is an excitable, nervous person. She construed her dream into an apparition, or something of the sort, no doubt, and has taken a fit with fright. Now, then, I must see you all back into your rooms, for till the house is settled she cannot be looked after. Gentlemen have the goodness to set the ladies the example. This ingram I am sure you will not fail in evincing superiority to idle terrors. Amy and Louisa return to your nests like a pair of doves as you are. Madame—to the dowagers—you will take cold to a dead certainty if you stay in this chill gallery any longer. And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he could try to get them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories. I did not wait to be ordered back to mine, but retreated unnoticed, as unnoticed I had left it. Not however, to go to bed. On the contrary, I began and dressed myself carefully. The sounds I had heard after the scream, and the words that had been uttered, had probably been heard only by me, for they had proceeded from the room above mine, but they assured me it was not a servant's dream which had thus struck horror through the house, and that the explanation Mr. Rochester had given was merely an invention framed to pacify his guests. I dressed, then, to be ready for emergencies. When dressed, I sat a long time by the window looking out over the silent grounds and silvered fields, and waiting for I knew not what. It seemed to me that some event must follow the strange cry, struggle, and calm. No. Stillness returned. Each murmur and movement ceased gradually, and in about an hour Thornfield Hall was again as hushed as a desert. It seemed that sleep and night had resumed their empire. Meantime the moon declined. She was about to set. Not liking to sit in the cold and darkness, I thought I would lie down on my bed, dressed as I was. I left the window, and moved with little noise across the carpet. As I stooped to tick off my shoes, a cautious hand tapped low at the door. "'Am I wanted?' I asked. "'Are you up?' asked the voice I expected to hear. Viz. My masters. "'Yes, sir.' "'And dressed?' "'Yes.' "'Come out, then, quietly.' I obeyed. Mr. Rochester stood in the gallery holding a light. "'I want you,' he said. "'Come this way. Take your time and make no noise.' My slippers were thin. I could walk the matted floor as softly as a cat. He glided up the gallery and up the stairs, and stopped in the dark low corridor of the fateful third story. I had followed and stood at his side. "'Have you a sponge in your room?' he asked in a whisper. "'Yes, sir.' "'Have you any salts—volatile salts?' "'Yes.' "'Go back and fetch both.' I returned, sought the sponge on the wash-stand, the salts in my drawer, and once more retraced my steps. He still waited. He held a key in his hand, approaching one of the small black doors. He put it in the lock. He paused and addressed me again. "'You don't turn sick at the sight of blood.' "'I think I shall not. I have never been tried yet.' I felt a thrill while I answered him, but no coldness and no faintness. "'Just give me your hand,' he said. "'It will not do to risk a fainting fit.' I put my fingers into his. "'Warm and steady,' was his remark. He turned the key and opened the door. I saw a room I remember to have seen before. The day Mrs. Fairfax showed me over the house. It was hung with tapestry, but the tapestry was now looped up in one part, and there was a door apparent which had then been concealed. This door was open, a light shone out of the room within. I heard thence a snarling, snatching sound, almost like a dog quarreling. Mr. Rochester, putting down his candle, said to me, "'Wait a minute,' and went forward into the inner apartment. A shout of laughter greeted his entrance, noisy at first, and terminating in Grace Poole's own goblin, ha, ha!' She then was there. He made some sort of arrangement without speaking. Though I heard a low voice address him, he came out and closed the door behind him. "'Here, Jane,' he said, and I walked round to the other side of a large bed, which, with its drawn curtains, concealed a considerable portion of the chamber. An easy chair was near the bed-head. A man sat in it, dressed with the exception of his coat. He was still. His head lent back, his eyes were closed. Mr. Rochester held the candle over him. I recognized in his pale and seemingly lifeless face the stranger, Mason. I saw, too, that his linen on one side and one arm was almost soaked in blood. "'Hold the candle,' said Mr. Rochester, and I took it. He fetched a basin of water from the wash-stand. "'Hold that,' said he. I obeyed. He took the sponge, dipped it in, and moistened the corpse-like face. He asked for my smelling-bottle, and applied it to the nostrils. Mr. Mason shortly enclosed his eyes. He groaned. Mr. Rochester opened the shirt of the wounded man, whose arm and shoulder were bandaged. He sponged away blood, trickling fast down. "'Is there immediate danger?' murmured Mr. Mason. "'Poo! No, a mere scratch. Don't be so overcome, man. Bear up. I'll fetch a surgeon for you now myself. You'll be able to be removed by morning, I hope.' "'Jane,' he continued, "'Sir, I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman, for an hour, or perhaps two hours. You will sponge the blood as I do when it returns. If he feels faint, you'll put the glass of water on that stand to his lips, and your salts to his nose. You will not speak to him on any pretext. And Richard, it will be at the peril of your life if you speak to her. Open your lips, agitate yourself, and I'll not answer for the consequences." Again the poor man groaned. He looked as if he dared not move. Fear, either of death or of something else, appeared almost to paralyse him. Mr. Rochester put the now bloody sponge into my hand, and I proceeded to use it as he had done. He watched me a second, then saying, "'Remember, no conversation,' he left the room. I experienced a strange feeling as the key grated in the lock, and the sound of his retreating steps ceased to be heard. Where then I was, in the third story, fastened into one of its mystic cells, night around me, a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes and hands, a murderous hardly separated from me by a single door. Yes, that was appalling. The rest I could bear, but I shuddered at the thought of Grace pool bursting out upon me. I must keep my post, however. I must watch this ghastly countenance, these blue still lips forbidden to unclose, these eyes now shut, now opening, now wandering through the room, now fixing on me, and ever glazed with the dullness of horror. I must dip my hand again and again in the basin of blood and water, and wipe away the trickling gore. I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on my employment, the shadows darken on the wrought antique tapestry round me, and grow black under the hangings of the vast old bed, and quiver strangely over the doors of a great cabinet opposite, whose front, divided into twelve panels, bore in grim design the heads of the twelve apostles, each enclosed in its separate panel as in a frame, while above them at the top rose an ebb and crucifix, and a dying Christ. According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered here a glance there, it was now the bearded physician, Luke, that bent his brow, now St. John's long hair that waved, and a non-the devilish face of Judas, that grew out of the panel, and seemed gathering life and threatened a revelation of the arch-traitor of Satan himself in his subordinate's form. Amidst all this I had to listen as well as watch, to listen for the movements of the wild beast or the fiend in Yonderside Den. But since Mr. Rochester's visit it seemed spellbound, all the night I heard but three sounds at three long intervals, a step-creek, a momentary renewal of the snarling canine noise, and a deep human groan. Then my own thoughts worried me. What crime was this that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the owner? What mystery that broke out now in fire and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night? What creature was it, that master and ordinary woman's face and shape, uttered the voice now of a mocking demon, and a none of a carrion-seeking bird of prey? And this man I bent over—this commonplace, quiet stranger—how had he become involved in the web of horror? And why had the fury flown at him? What made him seek this quarter of the house at an untimely season, when he should have been asleep in bed? I had heard Mr. Rochester assign him an apartment below. What brought him here? And why now was he so tame under the violence or treachery done him? Why did he so quietly submit to the concealment Mr. Rochester enforced? Why did Mr. Rochester enforce this concealment? His guest had been outraged, his own life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted against, and both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion. Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester, that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former—the few words which had passed between them assured me of this. It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active energy of the other. Went then had arisen Mr. Rochester's dismay when he heard of Mr. Mason's arrival. Why had the mere name of this unresisting individual, whom his word now suffice to control like a child, fallen on him a few hours since, as a thunderbolt might fall on an oak? Oh, I could not forget his look and his paleness when he whispered, Jane, I have got to blow. I have got to blow, Jane. I could not forget how the arm had trembled which he rested on my shoulder, and it was no light matter which could thus bow the resolute spirit and thrill the vigorous frame of Fairfax Rochester. When will he come? When will he come? I cried inwardly as the night lingered and lingered, as my bleeding patient drooped, moaned, sickened, and neither day nor aid arrived. I had again and again held the water to Mason's white lips, again and again offered him the stimulating salts. My effort seemed ineffectual. Either bodily or mental suffering, or loss of blood, or all three combined were fast prostrating his strength. He moaned so, and looked so weak, wild, and lost, I feared he was dying, and I might not even speak to him. The candle, wasted at last, went out. As it expired, I perceived streaks of gray light edging the window-curtains. Dawn was then approaching. See, I heard pilot bark far below, out of his distant kennel in the courtyard. Hope revived. Nor was it unwarranted. In five minutes more the grating key, the yielding lock, warned me my watch was relieved. It could not have lasted more than two hours. Many a week has seemed shorter. Mr. Rochester entered, and with him the surgeon he had been to fetch. Now, Carter, beyond the alert, he said to this last, I give you but half an hour for dressing the wound, fastening the bandages, getting the patient downstairs and all. And but I see fit to move, sir. No doubt of it. It is nothing serious. He is nervous. His spirits must be kept up. Come set to work. Mr. Rochester drew back the thick curtain, drew up the holland blind, let in all the daylight he could, and I was surprised and cheered to see how far Dawn was advanced, what rosy streaks were beginning to brighten the east. Then he approached Mason, whom the surgeon was already handling. Now, my good fellow, how are you? He asked. She's done for me, I fear. Was the faint reply? Not a wit! Courage! This day fortnight shall hardly be a pin the worse of it. You've lost a little blood, that's all. Carter assure him there's no danger. I can do that conscientiously, said Carter, who had now undone the bandages. Only I wish I could have got here sooner. You would not have bled so much. But how is this? The flesh on the shoulder is torn as well as cut. This wound was not done with a knife. There have been teeth here." She bit me. He murmured. She worried me like a tigress when Rochester got the knife from her. You should not have yielded. You should have grappled with her at once, said Mr. Rochester. But under such circumstances what could one do? returned Mason. How it was frightful, he added, shuddering. She looked so quiet at first. I warned you, was his friend's answer. I said, be on your guard when you go near her. Besides, you might have waited till to-morrow and had me with you. It was mere folly to attempt the interview to-night and alone. I thought I could have done some good. You thought. You thought! Yes, it makes me impatient to hear you. But however you have suffered, and are likely to suffer enough for not taking my advice, so I'll say no more. Carter, hurry! The sun will soon rise, and I must have him off. Directly, sir, the shoulder is just bandaged. I must look to this other wound in the arm. She has had her teeth here, too, I think. She sucked the blood. She said she'd drain my heart, said Mason. I saw Mr. Rochester shudder. A singularly marked expression of disgust, horror, hatred, warped his countenance almost to distortion, but he only said, Come, be silent, Richard, and never mind her gibberish, don't repeat it. I wish I could forget it, was the answer. You will when you are out of the country, when you get back to Spanish town you may think of her as dead and buried, or rather you need not think of her at all. Impossible to forget this night. It is not impossible. Have some energy, man. You thought you were as dead as a herring two hours since, and you are all alive and talking now. There. Carter has done with you, or nearly so. I'll make you decent in a trice. Jane!" He turned to me for the first time since his re-entrance. Take this key, go down to my bedroom, and walk straight forward into my dressing-room. Open the top drawer of the wardrobe, and take out a clean shirt and neck handkerchief. Bring them here, and be nimble. I went out, sought the repository he had mentioned, found the articles named, and returned with them. Now, said he, go to the other side of the bed while I order his toilet. But don't leave the room. You may be wanted again. I've retired, as directed. Was anybody stirring below when you went down, Jane?" inquired Mr. Rochester presently. No, sir. All was very still. We shall get you off cannelly, Dick, and it will be better both for your sake and for that of the poor creature in yonder. I have striven long to avoid exposure, and I should not like it to come at last. Here, Carter, help him on with his waistcoat. Where did you leave your furred cloak? You can't travel a mile without that, I know, in this damned cold climate. In your room. Jane, run down to Mr. Mason's room, the one next mine, and fetch a cloak you will see there. Again, I ran and returned, bearing an immense mantle lined and edged with fur. Now I have another errand for you," said my untiring master. You must away to my room again. What a mercy you are showed with velvet, Jane! A clod-hopping messenger would never do at this juncture. You must open the middle drawer of my toilet table and take out a little file and little glass you will find there, quick. I flew thither and back, bringing the desired vessels. That's well. Now, doctor, I shall take the liberty of administering a dose myself on my own responsibility. I got this cordial at Rome of an Italian charlatan, a fellow you would have kicked, Carter. It is not a thing to be used indiscriminately, but it is good upon occasion, as now, for instance. Jane, a little water. He held out the tiny glass, and I half filled it from the water-bottle and a wash-stand. That will do. Now wet the lip of the file. I did so. He measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid, and presented it to Mason. Drink, Richard! It will give you the heart you lack, for an hour or so. But will it hurt me? Is it inflammatory? Drink! Drink! Drink! Mr. Mason obeyed, because it was evidently useless to resist. He was dressed now. He still looked pale, but he was no longer gory and sullied. Mr. Rochester let him sit three minutes after he had swallowed the liquid. He then took his arm. Now I am sure you can get on your feet," he said. Try. The patient rose. Carter, take him under the other shoulder. Be of good share, Richard. Step out, that's it. I do feel better, remarked Mr. Mason. I am sure you do. Now Jane, trip on before us away to the back stairs. Unbolt the side passage door, and tell the driver of the post-chase you will see in the yard, or just outside, for I told him not to drive his rattling wheels over the pavement. To be ready, we are coming. And Jane, if any one is about, come to the foot of the stairs and hem. It was by this time half-past five, and the sun was on the point of rising, but I found the kitchen still dark and silent. The side passage door was fastened. I opened it with as little noise as possible. All the yard was quiet, but the gates stood wide open, and there was a post-chase with horses ready harnessed, and the driver seated on the box, stationed outside. I approached him and said the gentlemen were coming. He nodded. Then I looked carefully round and listened. The stillness of early morning slumbered everywhere. The curtains were yet drawn over the servants' chamber windows. Little birds were just twittering in the blossom-blanched, altered trees, whose boughs drooped like white garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard. The carriage horses stamped from time to time in their closed stables. All else was still. The gentlemen now appeared. Mason, supported by Mr. Rochester and the surgeon, seemed to walk with tolerable ease. They assisted him into the shares. Carter followed. "'Take care of him,' said Mr. Rochester to the latter, and keep him at your house till he is quite well. I shall ride over in a day or two to see how he gets on. Richard, how is it with you?' The fresh air revives me, Fairfax. Leave the window open on his side, Carter. There is no wind. Good-bye, Dick." Fairfax. "'Well, what is it?' Let her be taken care of. Let her be treated as tenderly as may be. Let her—' he stopped, and burst into tears. "'I do my best, and have done it, and will do it,' was the answer. He shut up the chair's door, and the vehicle drove away. It would to God there was an end of all this!' added Mr. Rochester, as he closed and barred the heavy yard gates. This done he moved with slow step and abstracted air towards a door in the wall bordering the orchard. I, supposing he had done with me, prepared to return to the house. Again, however, I heard him call, "'Jane,' he'd opened the portal, and stood at it, waiting for me. "'Come, were there are some freshness for a few moments,' he said. "'That house is a mere dungeon. Don't you feel it so?' It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir. It's a glamour of inexperiences over your eyes,' he answered, and you see it through a charmed medium. You cannot discern that the gilding is slime in the silk drapery's cobwebs, that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished wood's mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now here,' he pointed to the leafy enclosure he had entered, all is real, sweet and pure. He strayed down a walk edged with box, with apple-trees, pear-trees, and cherry-trees on one side, and a border on the other full of all sorts of old-fashioned flowers, stalks, sweet-williams, prim-roses, pansies, mingled with southern wood, sweet-brier, and various fragrant herbs. They were fresh now as a succession of April showers and gleams, followed by a lovely spring morning could make them. The sun was just entering the dappled east, and his light illumined the wreathed and dewy orchard trees, and shone down the quiet walks under them. Jane, will you have a flower? He gathered a half-blown rose, the first on the bush, and offered it to me. Thank you, sir. Do you like this sunrise, Jane? That sky with its high and light clouds, which are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm, this placid and balmy atmosphere? I do, very much. You have passed a strange night, Jane. Yes, sir. But it has made you look pale. Were you afraid when I left you alone with Mason? I was afraid of someone coming out of thee in a room. But I had fastened the door. I had the key in my pocket. I should have been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb—my pet lamb—so near a wolf's den unguarded. You were safe. Will Grace Poole live here still, sir? Oh, yes, don't trouble your head about her. Put the thing out of your thoughts. But it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays. Never fear, I will take care of myself. Is the danger you apprehended last night gone by now, sir? I cannot vouch for that till Mason is out of England, nor even then. To live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spew fire any day. But Mr. Mason seems a man easily led. Your influence, sir, is evidently potent with him. He will never set you at defiance or willfully injure you. Oh, no! Mason will not defy me, nor knowing it will he hurt me. But unintentionally he might in a moment by one careless word deprive me, if not of life, yet for ever of happiness. Tell him to be cautious, sir. Let him know what you fear, and show him how to avert the danger. He laughed sardonyly, hastily took my hand, and as hastily threw it from him. If I could do that, simpleton, where would the danger be? Annihilated in a moment. Ever since I have known Mason, I have only had to say to him, do that, and the thing has been done. But I cannot give him orders in this case. I cannot say beware of harming me, Richard, for it is imperative that I should keep him ignorant that harm to me is possible. Now you look puzzled, and I will puzzle you further. You are my little friend, are you not? I like to serve you, sir, and to obey you in all that is right. And precisely, I see you do. I see genuine contentment in your gait and mean, your eye and face when you are helping me and pleasing me, working for me and with me, in, as you characteristically say, all that is right. For if I bid you do what you thought wrong, there would be no light-footed running, no neat-handed alacrity, no lively grace and animated complexion. My friend would then turn to me, quiet and pale, and would say, No, sir, that is impossible. I cannot do it, because it is wrong. And would become immutable as a fixed star. Well, you too have power over me, and may injure me, yet I dare not show you where I am vulnerable, lest faithful and friendly as you are you should transfix me at once. If you have no more to fear for Mr. Mason than you have for me, sir, you are very safe. God grant it may be so. Here, Jane, is an arbor, sit down. The arbor was an arch in the wall, lined with ivy, it contained a rustic seat. Mr. Rochester took it, leaving room, however, for me, but I stood before him. Sit, he said. The bench is long enough for two. You don't hesitate to take a place at my side, do you? Is that wrong, Jane? I answered him by assuming it. To refuse would, I felt, have been unwise. Now, my little friend, while the sun drinks the dew, while all the flowers in this old garden awake and expand, and the birds fetch their young ones breakfast out of the thorn-field, and the early bees do their first spell of work, I'll put a case to you, which you must endeavour to suppose your own. But first look at me, and tell me you are at ease, and not fearing that I err in detaining you, or that you err in staying. No, sir, I am content. Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy. Suppose you were no longer a girl well-raired and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from childhood upwards. Imagine yourself in a remote foreign land. Conceive that you there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from what motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence. Mind I don't say a crime—I'm not speaking of shedding blood or of any other guilty act—which might make the perpetrator amenable to the law. My word is error. The results of what you have done become in time to you utterly insupportable. You take measures to obtain relief—unusual measures, but neither unlawful nor culpable. Still you are miserable, for hope has quitted you on the very confines of life. Your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which you feel will not leave at the time of setting. Bitter and base associations have become the sole food of your memory. You wander here and there, seeking rest and exile, happiness and pleasure—I mean in heartless sense your pleasure—such as dulls intellect and blight feeling. Heart weary and soul withered, you come home after years of voluntary banishment. You make a new acquaintance—how aware, no matter. You find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never before encountered. And they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint. Such society revives, regenerates, you feel better days come back. Fire wishes, purer feelings—you desire to recommend your life and to spend what remains you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom—a mere conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies nor your judgment approves? He paused for an answer. And what was I to say? Oh, for some good spirit to suggest a judicious and satisfactory response! Vain aspiration! The west wind whispered in the ivy round me, but no gentle aerial borrowed its breath as a medium of speech. The birds sang in the treetops, but their song, however sweet, was inarticulate. Again Mr. Rochester propounded his query. Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant man, justified in daring the world's opinion in order to attach him for ever this gentle, gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his own peace of mind and regeneration of life? Sir," I answered, a wondrous repose or a sinner's reformation should never depend on a fellow creature. Men and women die, philosophers falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness. If any one you know has suffered an erd, let him look higher than his equals for strength to amend and solace to heal. But the instrument—the instrument—God who does the work ordains the instrument. I have myself, I tell it to you without parable, been a worldly dissipated restless man, and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in— He paused. The birds went on caroling, the leaves lightly rustling. They almost wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to catch the suspended revelation, but they would have had to wait many minutes. So long was the silence protracted. At last I looked up at the tardy speaker. He was looking eagerly at me. Little friend," said he, in quite a changed tone, while his face changed too, losing all its softness and gravity, and becoming harsh and sarcastic. You have noticed my tender penchant for Miss Ingram? Don't you think if I married her she would regenerate me with a vengeance? He got up instantly, went quite to the other end of the walk, and when he came back he was humming a tune. Jane, Jane," said he, stopping before me, you are quite pale with your vigils. Don't you curse me for disturbing your rest? Curse you? No, sir." Shea-cans in confirmation of the word. What cold fingers! They were warmer last night when I touched them at the door of the mysterious chamber. Jane, when will you watch with me again? Whenever I can be useful, sir. For instance, the night before I am married, I am sure it shall not be able to sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me company? To you I can talk of my lovely one, for now you have seen her and know her. Yes, sir. She's a rare one, is she not, Jane? Yes, sir. A strapper, a real strapper, Jane, big brown and buxom, with hair just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had. Bless me. There's Dent and Lynn in the stables. Go in by the shrubbery through that wicket. As I went one way, he went another, and I heard him in the yard saying cheerfully, "'Mason got the start of you all this morning. He was gone before sunrise. I rose at four to see him off.'" End of CHAPTER XXI of Jane Eyre. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Elizabeth Clett. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte CHAPTER XXI Presentiments are strange things, and so are sympathies, and so are signs. And the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist—for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding the alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin, whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for ought we know, may be but the sympathies of nature with man. When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie Levin say to Martha Abbott that she had been dreaming about a little child, and that a dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to oneself or one's kin. The saying might have worn out of my memory, had not a circumstance immediately followed which served indelibly to fix it there. The next day Bessie was sent for home to the deathbed of her little sister. And late I had often recalled this saying and this incident, for during the past week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not brought with it a dream of an infant, which I sometimes hushed in my arms, sometimes dandled on my knee, sometimes watched playing with daisies on a lawn, or again dabbling its hands in running water. It was a wailing child this night, and a laughing one the next. Now it nestled close to me, and now it ran from me. But whatever mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven successive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber. I did not like this iteration of one idea, the strange recurrence of one image, and I grew nervous as bedtime approached and the hour of the vision drew near. It was from companionship with this baby phantom I had been roused on that moonlight night when I heard the cry, and it was on the afternoon of the day following I was summoned downstairs by a message that someone wanted me in Mrs. Fairfax's room. On repairing thither I found a man waiting for me, having the appearance of a gentleman's servant. He was dressed in deep mourning, and the hat he held in his hand was surrounded with a crepe band. I dare say you hardly remember me, miss," he said, rising as I entered. But my name is Levin. I lived coachman with Mrs. Reed when you were at Gateshead, eight and nine years since, and I live there still. Oh, Robert, how do you do? I remember you very well, used to give me a ride sometimes on Miss Georgiana's Bay Pony, and how is Bessie? You are married to Bessie? Yes, miss, my wife is very hearty, thank you. She brought me another little one about two months since. We have three now, and both mother and child are thriving. And are the family well at the house, Robert? I am sorry I can't give you better news of them, miss, they are very badly at present, in great trouble. I hope no one is dead," I said, glancing at his black dress. He too looked down at the crepe round his hat and replied, Mr. John died yesterday was a week at his chambers in London. Mr. John? Yes. And how does his mother bear it? Why you see, miss, there, it is not a common mishap. His life has been very wild. These last three years he gave himself up to strange ways, and his death was shocking. I heard from Bessie he was not doing well. Doing well? He could not do worse. He ruined his health and his estate amongst the worst men and the worst women. He got into debt and into jail. His mother helped him out twice, but as soon as he was free he returned to his old companions and habits. His head was not strong. The knaves he lived amongst fooled him beyond anything I ever heard. He came down to Gateshead about three weeks ago and wanted Mrs. to give up all to him. Mrs. refused. Her means have long been much reduced by his extravagance. So he went back again, and the next news was that he was dead. How he died, God knows. They say he killed himself. I was silent. The things were frightful. Robert Levin resumed. Mrs. had been out of health herself for some time. She had got very stout, but was not strong with it, and the loss of money and fear of poverty were quite breaking her down. The information about Mr. John's death and the manner of it came too suddenly. It brought on a stroke. She was three days without speaking, but last Tuesday she seemed rather better. She appeared as if she wanted to say something, and kept making signs to my wife and mumbling. It was only yesterday morning, however, that Bessie understood she was pronouncing your name, and at last she made out the words, Bring Jane! Fetch Jane ere I want to speak to her. Bessie is not sure whether she is in her right mind, or means anything by the words. But she told Miss Reed and Miss Georgiana, and advised them to send for you. The young ladies put it off at first, but their mother grew so restless, and said, Jane! Jane! So many times, that at last they consented. I left Gateshead yesterday, and if you can get ready, Miss, I should like to take you back with me early to-morrow morning. Yes, Robert, I shall be ready. It seems to me that I ought to go. I think so too, Miss. She said she was sure you would not refuse, but I suppose you will have to ask Lee before you can get off. Yes, and I will do it now." And having directed him into the servants-hall, and recommended him to the care of John's wife and the attentions of John himself, I went in search of Mr. Rochester. He was not in any of the lower rooms. He was not in the yard, the stables, or the grounds. I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had seen him. Yes, she believed he was playing billiards with Miss Ingram. To the billiard-room I hastened, the click of balls and the hum of voices resounded thence. Mr. Rochester and Miss Ingram, the two Mrs. Estian, and their admirers, were all busyed in the game. It required some courage to disturb so interesting a party. My errand, however, was one I could not defer. So I approached the master where he stood at Miss Ingram's side. She turned as I drew near, and looked at me haughtily. Her eyes seemed to demand, What can the creeping creature want now? And when I said in a low voice, Mr. Rochester, she made a movement as if tempted to order me away. I remember her appearance at the moment. It was very graceful and very striking. She wore a morning-robe of sky-blue crepe. Her gauzy, azure scarf was twisted in her hair. She had been all animation with the game, and irritated pride did not lower the expression of her haughty liniments. Was that person want you? She inquired of Mr. Rochester, and Mr. Rochester turned to see who the person was. He made a curious grimace, one of his strange and equivocal demonstrations, threw down his cue, and followed me from the room. Well, Jane," he said, as he rested his back against the schoolroom door which he had shut. If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two. What to do? Where to go? To see a sick lady who was sent for me. What sick lady? Where does she live? At Gateshead, in Blancheshire. Blancheshire? That is a hundred miles off. Who may she be that she sends for people to see her at that distance? Her name is Reed, sir, Mrs. Reed. Reed of Gateshead? There was a Reed of Gateshead, a magistrate. It is his widow, sir. And what have you to do with her? How do you know her? Mr. Reed was my uncle, my mother's brother. The deuce he was! He never told me that before. You always said you had no relations. None that would own me, sir. Mr. Reed is dead, and his wife cast me off. Why? Because I was poor and burdensome, and she disliked me. But Reed left children. You must have cousins. The George Lane was talking of a Reed of Gateshead yesterday, who, he said, was one of the various rascals on town, and Ingram was mentioning a Georgiana Reed of the same place, who was much admired for her beauty a season or two ago in London. John Reed is dead, too, sir. He ruined himself, and half ruined his family, and is supposed to have committed suicide. The news so shocked his mother that it brought on an apoplectic attack. And what good can you do her? Nonsense, Jane! I would never think of running a hundred miles to see an old lady, who will perhaps be dead before you reach her. Besides, you say she cast you off. Yes, sir, but that is long ago, and when her circumstances were very different, I could not be easy to collect her wishes now. How long will you stay? As short a time as possible, sir. Promise me only to stay a week. I had better not pass my word. I might be obliged to break it. At all events you will come back. You will not be induced under any pretext to take up a permanent residence with her. Oh, no! I shall certainly return, if all be well. And who goes with you? You don't travel a hundred miles alone? No, sir. She has sent her coachman. A person to be trusted? Yes, sir. He's lived ten years in the family. Mr. Rochester meditated. When do you wish to go? Early to-morrow morning, sir. Well, you must have some money. You can't travel without money, and I dare say you have not much. I have given you no salary yet. How much have you in the world, Jane?" He asked, smiling. I drew out my purse, a meager thing it was. Five shillings, sir. He took the purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as if his scantiness amused him. Soon he produced his pocket-book. Here, said he, offering me a note. It was fifty pounds, and he owed me but fifteen. I told him I had no change. I don't want change, you know that. Take your wages." I declined, accepting more than was my due. He scowled at first, then, as if recollecting something, he said, Right, right, better not give you all now. You would, perhaps, stay away three months if you had fifty pounds. There are ten. Is it not plenty? Yes, sir, but now you owe me five. Come back for it, then. I am your banker for forty pounds. Mr. Rochester, I may as well mention another matter of business to you while I have the opportunity. Matter of business? I am curious to hear it. You have as good as informed me, sir, that you are going shortly to be married. Yes. What, then? In that case, sir, Adele ought to go to school. I am sure you'll perceive the necessity of it. To get her out of my bride's way, who might otherwise walk over her rather too emphatically. There's sense in the suggestion, not a doubt of it. Adele, as you say, must go to school, and you, of course, must march straight to the devil? I hope not, sir, but I must seek another situation somewhere." In course, he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion of features equally fantastic in ludicrous. He looked at me some minutes. And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited by you to seek a place, I suppose. No, sir. I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify me in asking favours of them, but I shall advertise. You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt," he growled, "'at your peril, you advertise. I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane. I have a use for it." And so have I, sir. I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me. I could not spare the money on any account. "'Little-niggered,' said he, refusing me a pecuniary request, give me five pounds, Jane." "'Not five shillings, sir, nor five pints. Just let me look at the cash.' "'No, sir, you are not to be trusted.' "'Jane.'" "'Sir, promise me one thing. I'll promise you any thing, sir, that I think I am likely to perform. Not to advertise, and to trust this quest of a situation to me. I'll find you one in time.' "'I shall be glad to do so, sir. If you and your turn will promise that I and Adele shall be both safe out of the house, before your bride enters it.' "'Very well, very well, I'll pledge my word on it. You go to-morrow, then.' "'Yes, sir, early.' "'Shall you come down to the drawing-room after dinner?' "'No, sir, I must prepare for the journey. Then you and I must bid good-bye for a little while.' "'I suppose so, sir.' "'And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me. I'm not quite up to it.' "'They say, fair well, or any other form they prefer. Then say it.' "'Fair well, Mr. Rochester, for the present. What must I say?' "'The same, if you like, sir?' "'Fair well, Miss Eyre, for the present. Is that all?' "'Yes.' "'It seems stingy to my notions, and dry and unfriendly. I should like something else, a little addition to the right. If one shook hands, for instance. But no, that would not content me either. So you'll do no more than say, fair well, Jane.' "'It is enough, sir. As much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many. Very likely. But it is blank and cool. Fair well.' "'How long is he going to stand with his back against that door?' I asked myself. I want to commence my packing. The dinner-bell rang, and suddenly, away he bolted, without another syllable. I saw him no more during the day, and was off before he had risen in the morning. I reached the lodge at Gateshead about five o'clock in the afternoon of the first of May. I stepped in there before going up to the hall. It was very clean and neat. The ornamental windows were hung with little white curtains. The floor was spotless. The grate and fire-iron so burnished bright, and the fire burnt clear. Bessie sat on the hearth, nursing her last borne, and Robert and his sister played quietly in a corner. "'Bless you! I knew you would come!' exclaimed Mrs. Levin as I entered. "'Yes, Bessie,' said I, after I had kissed her, and I trust I am not too late. How has Mrs. Reed, alive still, I hope? Yes, she is alive, had more sensible and collected than she was. The doctor says she may linger a week or two yet, but he hardly thinks she will finally recover.' Her she mentioned me lately. "'She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would come. But she is sleeping now, or was ten minutes ago when I was up at the house. She generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon, and wakes up about six or seven. Will you rest yourself here an hour, Miss? And then I will go up with you.' Robert here entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the cradle, and went to welcome him. Afterward she insisted on my taking off my bonnet and having some tea, for she said I looked pale and tired. I was glad to accept her hospitality, and I submitted to be relieved of my travelling garb just as passively as I used to let her undress me when a child. Old times crowded best back on me as I watched her bustling about, setting out the tea tray with her best china, cutting bread and butter, toasting a tea-cake, and between wiles giving little Robert a Jane an occasional tap or push, just as she used to give me in former days. Bessie had retained her quick temper as well as her light foot and good looks. Tea ready I was going to approach the table, but she desired me to sit still, quite in her old peremptory tones. I must be served at the fireside, she said, and she placed before me a little round stand with my cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to accommodate me with some privately perloined dainty on a nursery chair, and I smiled and obeyed her as in bygone days. She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort of a person the mistress was, and when I told her there was only a master, whether he was a nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I told her he was rather an ugly man, but quite a gentleman, and that he treated me kindly and I was content. Then I went on to describe to her the gay company that had lately been staying at the house, and to these details Bessie listened with interest. They were precisely of the kind she relished. In such conversation an hour was soon gone. Bessie restored to me my bonnet, etc., and accompanied by her I quitted the lodge for the hall. It was also accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years ago, walked down the path I was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw morning in January I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered heart, a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation, to seek the chilly harbourage of low wood, that borne so far away and unexplored. The same hostile roof now again rose before me, my prospects were doubtful yet, and I had yet an aching heart. I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth, but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers, and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite healed, and the flame of resentment extinguished. You shall go into the breakfast-room first," said Bessie as she proceeded me through the hall. The young ladies will be there. In another moment I was within that apartment. There was every article of furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first introduced to Mr. Brocklehurst, the very rug he had stood upon still covered the hearth. Glancing at the book-cases, I thought I could distinguish the two volumes of Buick's British birds, occupying their old place on the third shelf, and Gulliver's travels and the Arabian nights ranged just above. The inanimate objects were not changed, but the living things had altered past recognition. Two young ladies appeared before me, one very tall, almost as tall as Miss Ingram, very thin too, with a sallow face and severe mean. There was something ascetic in her look, which was augmented by the extreme plainness of a straight-skirted, black stuffed dress, a starched linen collar, hair combed away from the temples, and the nun-like ornament of a string of ebony beads and a crucifix. Thus I felt sure was Eliza, though I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that elongated and colourless visage. The other was as certainly Georgiana, but not the Georgiana I remembered, the slim and fairy-like girl of eleven. This was a full-blown, very plump damsel, fair as waxwork, with handsome and regular features, languishing blue eyes and ring-littered yellow hair. The hue of her dress was black too, but its fashion was so different from her sister's, so much more flowing and becoming, it looked as stylish as the others looked puritanical. In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother, and only one. The thin and pallid elder daughter had her parents' cairn-gorn eye. The blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and chin, perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable hardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous and buxom. Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed me by the name of Miss Air. Eliza's greeting was delivered in a short, abrupt voice, without a smile, and then she sat down again, fixed her eyes on the fire, and seemed to forget me. Georgiana added to her, "'How do you do?' Several common places about my journey, the weather, and so on, uttered in rather a drawing tone, and accompanied by sundry side glances that measured me from head to foot, now traversing the folds of my drab merino-police, and now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting you know that they think you a quiz, without actually saying the words. A certain superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by any positive rudeness in word or deed. A sneer, however—whether covert or open—had now no longer that power over me at once possessed. As I sat between my cousins, I was surprised to find how easy I felt, under the total neglect of the one in the semi-sarcastic attentions of the other. Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana ruffle me. The fact was, I had other things to think about. Within the last few months, feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than any they could raise—pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite, had been excited than any it was in their power to inflict or bestow—that their heirs gave me no concern either for good or bad. "'How is Mrs. Reed?' I asked soon, looking calmly at Georgiana, who thought fit to bridle at the direct address, as if it were an unexpected liberty. "'Mrs. Reed!' "'Ah! Mamma! You mean? She is extremely poorly. I doubt if you can see her to-night.' "'If,' said I, you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come, I should be much obliged to you.' Georgiana almost started, and she opened her blue eyes, wild and wide. "'I know she had a particular wish to see me,' I added, and I would not defer attending to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary. "'Mama! Dislikes being disturbed in an evening,' remarked Eliza. I soon rose, quietly took off my bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and said I would just step out to Bessie—who was, I dared say, in the kitchen—and ask her to ascertain whether Mrs. Reed was disposed to receive me or not to-night. I went, and having found Bessie and dispatcher on my errand, I proceeded to take further measures. It had here to fore been my habit always to shrink from arrogance. Received as I had been to-day, I should, a year ago, have resolved to quit Gateshead the very next morning. Now it was disclosed to me all at once that that would be a foolish plan. I had taken a journey of a hundred miles to see my aunt, and I must stay with her till she was better—or dead. As to her daughter's pride or folly, I must put it on one side—make myself independent of it. So I addressed the housekeeper, asked her to show me a room, told her I should probably be a visitor here for a week or two, had my trunk conveyed to my chamber, and followed it thither myself. I met Bessie on the landing. Mrs. is awake, said she. I have told her you are here. Come and let us see if she will know you. I did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days. I hastened before Bessie. I softly opened the door. A shaded light stood on the table, for it was now getting dark. There was the great four-post bed with amber hangings as of old. There the toilet-table, the armchair and the foot-stool, at which I had a hundred times been sentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for offenses by me uncommitted. I looked into a certain corner near, half expecting to see the slim outline of a once-dreaded switch which used to lurk there, waiting to leap out, implike, and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I approached the bed. I opened the curtains, and leant over the high-piled pillows. Well did I remember Mrs. Reed's face, and I eagerly sought the familiar image. It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance, and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of roof for her great sufferings, and a strong yarning to forget and forgive all injuries, to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity. The well-known face was there, stern, relentless as ever. There was that peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised, imperious, despotic eyebrow. How often had it lowered on me menace and hate, and how the recollection of childhood's terrors and sorrows revived as I traced its harsh line now! And yet I stooped down and kissed her. She looked at me. Is this Jane Eyre? she said. Yes, Aunt Reed, how are you, dear Aunt? I had once vowed that I would never call her Aunt again. I thought it no sin to forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened on her hand which lay outside the sheet. Had she pressed mine kindly, I should at that moment have experienced true pleasure. But unimpressionable natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural antipathies so readily eradicated. Aunt Reed took her hand away, and turning her face rather from me, she remarked that the night was warm. Again, she regarded me so icily, I felt at once that her opinion of me, her feeling towards me, was unchanged and unchangeable. I knew by her stony eye, opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears, that she was resolved to consider me bad to the last, because to believe me good would give her no generous pleasure, only a sense of mortification. I felt pain, and then I felt ire, and then I felt a determination to subdue her, to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will. My tears had risen just as in childhood. I ordered them back to their source. I brought a chair to the bed-head. I sat down and leaned over the pillow. "'You sent for me,' I said, and I am here, and it is my intention to stay till I see how you get on." "'Oh, of course. You have seen my daughters?' "'Yes.'" "'Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some things over with you I have on my mind. Tonight it is too late, and I have a difficulty in recalling them. But there was something I wished to say. Let me see.' The wandering look and changed utterance told me what wreck had taken place in her once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the bed-clothes round her. My elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, fixed it down. She was at once irritated. "'Sit up,' said she, "'don't annoy me with holding the clothes fast.' "'Are you Jane Eyre?' "'I am, Jane Eyre.' "'I have had more trouble with that child than anyone would believe. Such a burden to be left on my hands, and so much annoyance as she caused me daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden starts of temper, and her continual unnatural watchings of one's movements. I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or like a fiend. No child ever spoke or looked as she did. I was glad to get her away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowwood? The fever broke out there, and many of the pupils died. She, however, did not die. But I said she did. I wish she had died. A strange wish, Mrs. Reed. Why do you hate her so? I had a dislike to her mother always, for she was my husband's only sister, and a great favourite with him. He opposed the families disowning her when she made her low marriage, and when news came of her death he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby, though I entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it. A sickly whining, pining thing. It would wail in its cradle all night long, not screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and moaning. Reed pitied it, and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it had been his own, more indeed than he ever noticed his own at that age. He would try to make my children friendly to the little beggar. The darlings could not bear it, and he was angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his last illness he had it brought continually to his bedside, and but an hour before he died he bound me by vow to keep the creature. I would as soon have been charged with a poor per brat out of a work-house, but he was weak, naturally weak. John does not at all resemble his father, and I am glad of it. John is like me, and like my brothers, he is quite a Gibson. Oh! I wish he would cease tormenting me with letters for money. I have no more money to give him. We are getting poor. I must send away half my servants and shut up part of the house, or let it off. I can never submit to do that. It how are we to get on? Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and always loses poor boy. He is beset by sharpers. John is sunk and degraded. His look is frightful. I feel ashamed for him when I see him. She was getting much excited. I think I had better leave her now," said I, to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed. Perhaps you had, Miss, but she often talks in this way towards night in the morning she is calmer. I rose. Stop! exclaimed Mrs. Reed. There is another thing I wish to say. He threatens me. He continually threatens me with his own death, or mine, and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great wound in his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face. I have come to a strange pass. I have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How was the money to be had? Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draft. She succeeded with difficulty. Soon after Mrs. Reed grew more composed and sank into a dozing state. I then left her. More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with her. She continued either delirious or lethargic, and the doctor forbade everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime I got on as well as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold indeed, at first. Eliza would sit, half the day sowing, reading or writing, and scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister. Georgiana would chat a nonsense to her Khmeri bird by the hour and take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for occupation or amusement. I had brought my drawing materials with me, and they served me for both. Provided with a case of pencils and some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes, painting any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination—a glimpse of sea between two rocks, the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk, a group of reeds and water flags, and an eyed's head, crowned with lotus flowers rising out of them, an elf sitting in Hedge Sparrow's nest under a wreath of hawthorn bloom. One morning I felt a sketching of face. What sort of a face it was to be I did not care or know? I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent forehead, and a square lower outline of visage. That contour gave me pleasure. My fingers proceeded actively to fill it with features. Strongly marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that brow. Then followed naturally a well-defined nose, with a straight ridge and full nostrils. Then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means narrow. An affirmed chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it. Of course some black whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair tufted on the temples and waved above the forehead. Now for the eyes. I had left them to the last because they required the most careful working. I drew them large. I shaped them well. The eyelashes I traced long and somber, the irids lustrous and large. Good! But not quite the thing, I thought, as I surveyed the effect. They want more force and spirit. And I wrought the shades blacker, that the lights might flash more brilliantly. A happy touch or two secured success. There! I had a friend's face under my gaze, and what did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs on me? I looked at it. I smiled at the speaking likeness. I was absorbed and content. "'Is that a portrait of some one you know?' asked Eliza, who had approached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head, and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied. It was, in fact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was that to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana also advanced to look. The other drawings pleased her much, but she called that an ugly man. They both seemed surprised at my skill. I offered to sketch their portraits, and each in turn sat for a pencil outline. Then Georgiana produced her album. I promised to contribute a water-colour drawing. This put her at once into good humour. She proposed to walk in the grounds. Before we had been out two hours, we were deep in a confidential conversation. She had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter she had spent in London two seasons ago, of the admiration she had there excited, the attention she had received, and I even got hints of the titled Conquest she had made. In the course of the afternoon and evening these hints were enlarged on, various soft conversations were reported, and sentimental scenes represented, and in short, a volume of a novel of fashionable life was that day improvised by her for my benefit. The communications were renewed from day to day. They always ran on the same theme, herself, her loves and woes. It was strange she never once adverted either to her mother's illness or her brother's death, or the present gloomy state of the family prospects. Her mind seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety, and aspirations after dissipations to come. She passed about five minutes each day in her mother's sick-room, and no more. Eliza still spoke little. She had evidently no time to talk. I never saw a busier person that she seemed to be, either it was difficult to say what she did, or rather to discover any result of a diligence. She had an alarm to call her up early. I know not how she occupied herself before breakfast, but after that meal she divided her time into regular portions, and each hour had its allotted task. Three times a day she studied a little book, which I found on inspection was a common prayer book. I asked her once what was the great attraction of that volume, and she said, the rubric. Three hours a day she gave to stitching with gold thread the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large enough for a carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this article, she informed me it was a covering for the altar of a new church, lately erected near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her diary, two to working by herself in the kitchen garden, and one to the regulation of her accounts. She seemed to want no company, no conversation. I believe she was happy in her way. This routine sufficed for her, and nothing annoyed her so much as the occurrence of any incident which forced her to vary its clockwork regularity. She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than usual, that John's conduct and the threatened ruin of the family had been a source of profound affliction to her. But she had now, she said, settled her mind and formed a resolution. Her own fortune she had taken care to secure, and when her mother died—and it was wholly improbable, she tranquilly remarked—that she should either recover or linger long, she would execute a long cherished project, seek a retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured from disturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous world. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her. Of course not! Georgiana and she had nothing in common, they never had had. She would not be burdened with her society for any consideration. Georgiana should take her own course, and she, Eliza, would take hers. Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her time in lying on the sofa, fretting about the dullness of the house, and wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an invitation up to town. It would be so much better, she said, if she could only get out of the way for a month or two till all was over. I did not ask what she meant by all being over, but I suppose she referred to the expected decease of her mother, and the gloomy sequel of funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of her sister's indolence and complaints than if no such murmuring, lounging object had been before her. One day, however, as she put away her account-book and unfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus. Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you, was certainly never allowed to come by the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness onto some other person's strength, if no one can be found willing to burden her or himself for such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable. Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon. You must be admired. You must be courted. You must be flattered. You must have music, dancing, and society, or you languish. You die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you independent of all efforts, and all wills but your own? Like one day, share it into sections, to each section apportion its task. Leave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes, include all. Do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity. The day will close almost before you are aware it is begun, and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant moment. You have had to seek no one's company, conversation, sympathy, forbearance. You have lived in short as an independent being ought to do. Take this advice. The first and last I shall offer you. Then you will not want me or any one else happen what may. Neglect it. Go on as here to fore, craving, whining, and idling, and suffer the results of your idiocy, however bad and insuperable they may be. I tell you this plainly, and listen, for though I shall no more repeat what I am about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my mother's death, I wash my hands of you. From the day her coffin is carried to the vault and gates head church, you and I will be as separate as if we had never known each other. You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim. I can tell you this, if the whole human race ourselves except it were swept away, and we too stood alone on the earth, I would leave you in the old world and be take myself to the new." She closed her lips. "'You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that to raid,' answered Georgiana. "'Everybody knows you are the most selfish, heartless creature in existence, and I know your spiteful hatred towards me. I have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me about, Lord Edwin Veer. You could not bear me to be raised above you, to have a title, to be received into circles where you dare not show your face, and so you acted the spine in former, and ruined my prospects for ever.'" Georgiana took out her handkerchief, and blew her nose for an hour afterwards. Eliza sat cold, impassable, and assiduously industrious. True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here were two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably savillous for the want of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy draft indeed, but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human degluition. It was a wet and windy afternoon. Georgiana had fallen asleep on the sofa over the perusal of a novel. She went on to attend a saint's day service at the new church, for in matters of religion she was a rigid formalist. No weather ever prevented the punctual discharge of what she considered her devotional duties. Fair or foul, she went to church thrice every Sunday, and as often on weekdays as there were prayers. I bedthought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped, who lay there almost unheeded. The very servants paid her but a remittent attention. The hired nurse, being little looked after, would slip out of the room whenever she could. Bessie was faithful, but she had her own family to mind, and could only occasionally come to the hall. I found the sick-room unwatched, as I had expected. No nurse was there. The patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic, her livid face sunk in the pillows, the fire was dying in the grate. I renewed the fuel, rearranged the bed-clothes, gazed a while on her who could not now gaze on me, and then I moved away to the window. The rain beat strongly against the pains, the wind blew tempestuously. One lies there, I thought, who will soon be beyond the war of earthly elements. Wither will that spirit, now struggling to quit its material tenement, flit when at length released. In pondering the great mystery I thought of Helen Burns, recalled her dying words, her faith, her doctrine of the equality of disembodied souls. I was still listening in thought to her well-remembered tones, still picturing her pale and spiritual aspect, her wasted face and her sublime gaze as she lay on her placid deathbed, and whispered her longing to be restored to her divine father's bosom, when a feeble voice murmured from the couch behind. Who is that? I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days, was she reviving? I went up to her. It is I, Aunt Reed. Who—I—was her answer. Who are you? Looking at me with surprise and a sort of alarm, but still not wildly. You are quite a stranger to me. Where is Bessie? She is at the Lodge, Aunt. Aunt, she repeated. Who calls me Aunt? You are not one of the Gibson's, and yet I know you. That face and the eyes and forehead are quite familiar to me. You are like—why you are like Jane Eyre? I said nothing. I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring my identity. Yet, said she, I am afraid it is a mistake. My thoughts deceived me. I wished to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none exists. Besides, in eight years she must be so changed. I now gently assured her that I was the person she supposed and desired me to be, and seeing that I was understood, and that her senses were quite collected, I explained how Bessie had sent her husband to fetch me from Thornfield. I am very ill, I know," she said ere long. I was trying to turn myself a few minutes since, and fine, I cannot move a limb. It is as well I should ease my mind before I die. What we think little of in health burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me. Is the nurse here, or is there no one in the room but you?" I assured her we were alone. Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was in breaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own child. The other—she stopped. After all, it is of no great importance perhaps, she murmured to herself, and then I make it better, and to humble myself so to her is painful. She made an effort to alter her position, but failed. Her face changed. She seemed to experience some inward sensation, the precursor, perhaps, of the last pang. Well, I must get it over. Eternity is before me. I had better tell her. Go to my dressing-case, open it, and take out a letter you will see there." I obeyed her directions. "'Read the letter,' she said. It was short, and thus conceived. Madam, will you have the goodness to send me the address of my niece Jane Eyre, and to tell me how she is? It is my intention to write shortly, and desire her to come to me at Madeira. Hence has blessed my endeavours to secure a competency, and as I am unmarried and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and bequeath her at my death whatever I may have to leave. I am, madam, etc., etc., John Eyre, Madeira." It was dated three years back. "'Why did I never hear of this?' I asked. "'Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand in lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me, Jane. The fury with which you once turned on me, the tone in which you declared you aboard me, the worst of any body in the world, the unchild-like look and voice with which you affirmed that the very thought of me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated you with miserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when you thus started up and poured out the venom of your mind. I felt fear as if an animal that I had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes and cursed me in a man's voice. Bring me some water. Oh, make haste! Dear Mrs. Reed, said I, as I offered her the draft she required, think no more of all this, let it pass away from your mind. Forgive me for my passionate language. I was a child, then—eight, nine years had passed since that day. She heeded nothing of what I said, but when she had tasted the water and drawn breath she went on thus. I tell you I could not forget it, and I took my revenge. For you to be adopted by your uncle and placed in an estate of ease and comfort was what I could not endure. I wrote to him. I said I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead. She had died of typhus fever at Lowwood. Now, act as you please, write and contradict my assertion, expose my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to be my torment. My last hour is wracked by the recollection of a deed which, but for you, I should never have been tempted to commit. If you could be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to regard me with kindness and forgiveness, you have a very bad disposition, said she, and one to this day I feel it impossible to understand how, for nine years, you could be patient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence I can never comprehend. My disposition is not so bad as you think. I am passionate, but not vindictive. Many a time as a little child I should have been glad to love you if you would have let me, and I long earnestly to be reconciled to you now. Kiss me, aunt!" I approached my cheek to her lips. She would not touch it. She said I oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water. As I laid her down, for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she drank, I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine, the feeble fingers shrank from my touch, the glazing eyes shunned my gaze. "'Love me then, or hate me as you will,' I said at last. "'You have my full and free forgiveness. Ask now for gods, and be at peace.'" Poor suffering woman! It was too late for her to make now the effort to change her bitchual frame of mind. Living she had ever hated me. Dying she must hate me still. The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered half an hour longer, hoping to see some sign of amity, but she gave none. She was fast-relapsing into stupa, nor did her mind again rally. At twelve o'clock that night she died. I was not present to close her eyes, nor were either of her daughters. They came to tell us the next morning that all was over. She was by that time laid out. Eliza and I went to look at her. Georgiana, who had burst into loud weeping, said she dared not go. There was stretched Sarah Reed's once robust and active frame, rigid and still. Her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid. Her brow and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul. A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with gloom and pain. Nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying or hopeful or subduing did it inspire, only a grating anguish for her woes, not my loss, and a somber, tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a form. Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some minute she observed, with her constitution she should have lived to a good old age. Her life was shortened by trouble. And then a spasm constricted her mouth for an instant. As it passed away she turned and left the room, and so did I. Neither of us had dropped a tear. CHAPTER XXII Mr. Rochester had given me but one week's leave of absence, yet a month elapsed before I quitted Gateshead. I wished to leave immediately after the funeral, but Georgiana entreated me to stay till she could get off to London, with her she was now at last invited by her uncle Mr. Gibson, who had come down to direct his sister's interment, and settle the family affairs. Georgiana said she dreaded being left alone with Eliza. From her she got neither sympathy in her dejection, support in her fears, nor aid in her preparations. So I bore with her feeble-minded wailings and selfish lamentations as well as I could, and did my best in sewing for her and packing her dresses. It is true that while I worked, she would idle, and I thought to myself, if you and I were destined to live always together, cousin, we would commence matters on a different footing. I should not settle tamely down into being the forbearing party. I should assign you your share of labour, and compel you to accomplish it, or else it should be left undone. I should insist also on your keeping some of those drawling, half insincere complaints hushed in your own breast. It is only because our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes at a peculiarly mournful season, that I can send thus to render it so patient and compliant on my part. At last I saw Georgiana off. But now it was Eliza's turn to request me to stay another week. Her plans required all her time and attention, she said. She was about to depart for some unknown borne, and all day long she stayed in her own room, her door bolted within, filling trunks, emptying drawers, burning papers, and holding no communication with any one. She wished me to look after the house, to see callers, and answer notes of condolence. One morning she told me I was at liberty. And, she added, I'm obliged to you for your valuable services in discreet conduct. There is some difference between living with such a one as you and with Georgiana. You perform your own part in life and burden no one. Tomorrow—she continued—I set out for the Continent. I shall take up my abode in a religious house near Lille, a nunnery, you would call it. There I shall be quiet and unmolested. I shall devote myself for a time to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas, and to a careful study of the workings of their system. If I find it to be, as I have suspected is, the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently and in order, I shall embrace the tenets of Rome, and probably take the veil. I neither express surprise at this resolution nor attempt to dissuade her from it. The vocation will fit you to a hair, I thought. Much good may it do you." When we parted, she said, "'Good-bye, cousin Jane Eyre. I wish you well. You have some sense.'" I then returned, "'You are not without sense, cousin Eliza. But what you have, I suppose, in another year will be walled up alive in a French convent. However, it is not my business, and so it suits you. I don't much care." "'You are in the right,' said she, and with these words we each went our separate way. As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or her sister again, I may as well mention here that Georgiana made an advantageous match with a wealthy, worn-out man of fashion, and that Eliza actually took the veil, and is at this day superior of the convent where she passed the period of her novitiate, and which she endowed with her fortune. How people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long or short, I did not know. I had never experienced the sensation. I had known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after a long walk, to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy, and later what it was to come back from church to Lowood, to long for a plenteous meal and a good fire, and to be unable to get either. Neither of these returnings was very pleasant or desirable. No magnet drew me to a given point, increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came. The return to Thornfield was yet to be tried. My journey seemed tedious, very tedious, fifty miles one day, a night spent at an inn, fifty miles the next day. During the first twelve hours I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments, I saw her disfigured and discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice. I mused on the funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black train of tenants and servants. Few was the number of relatives, the gate being vault, the silent church, the solemn service. Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana. I beheld one the sinusior of a ballroom, the other the inmate of a convent cell, and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities of person and character. The evening arrival at the great town of, scattered these thoughts. Night gave them quite another turn. I laid down on my traveller's bed, I left reminiscence for anticipation. I was going back to Thornfield, but how long was I to stay there? Not long, of that I was sure. I had heard from Mrs. Fairfax and the interim of my absence. The party at the hall was dispersed, Mr. Rochester had left for London three weeks ago, but he was then expected to return in a fortnight. Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he was gone to make arrangements for his wedding, as he had talked of purchasing a new carriage. She said the idea of his marrying Miss Ingram still seemed strange to her, but from what everybody said, and from what she herself had seen, she could no longer doubt that the event would shortly take place. You would be strangely incredulous if you did doubt it, was my mental comment. I don't doubt it. The question followed, where was I to go? I dreamt of Miss Ingram all the night, in a vivid morning dream I saw her closing the gates of Thornfield against me, and pointing me out another road, and Mr. Rochester looked on with his arms folded, smiling sardonically as it seemed at both her and me. I had not notified to Mrs. Fairfax the exact day of my return, for I did not wish either car or carriage to meet me at Milcote. I proposed to walk the distance quietly by myself, and very quietly, after leaving my box and the hostless care, did I slip away from the George Inn about six o'clock of a June evening, and take the old road to Thornfield—a road which lay chiefly through fields, and was now little frequented. It was not a bright or a splendid summer evening, though fair and soft, the haymakers were at work all along the road, and the sky, though far from cloudless, was such as promised well for the future. Its blue, where blue was visible, was mild and settled, and its cloud-strat a high and thin. The west, too, was warm, no watery gleam chilled it, at seemed as if there was a fire lit, an altar burning behind its screen of marbled vapour, and out of apertures shone a golden redness. I felt glad as the road shortened before me, so glad that I stopped once to ask myself what that joy meant, and to remind reason that it was not to my home I was going, or to a permanent resting-place, or to a place where fond friends looked out for me and waited my arrival. Mrs. Fairfax will smile you a calm welcome to be sure, said I, and little Adele will clap her hands and jump to see you, but you know very well you are thinking of another than they, and that he is not thinking of you. But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as an experience? These affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege of again looking on Mr. Rochester, whether he looked on me or not, and they added, Hason! Hason! Be with him while you may, but a few more days or weeks at most, and you are parted from him for ever. And then I strangled a new-born agony, a deformed thing which I could not persuade myself to own and rear, and ran on. They are making hay, too, in thorn-field meadows, or rather the labourers are just quitting their work and returning home with their rakes on the shoulders, now at the hour I arrive. I have but a field or two to traverse, and then I shall cross the road and reach the gates. How full the hedges are of roses! But I have no time to gather any, I want to be at the house. I passed a tall briar shooting leafy and flowery branches across the path. I see the narrow stile with stone steps. And I see—Mr. Rochester sitting there, a book and a pencil in his hand. He is writing. Well, he is not a ghost, yet every nerve I have is unstrung. For a moment I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did not think I should tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my voice or the power of motion in his presence. I will go back as soon as I can stir. I need not make an absolute fool of myself. I know another way to the house. It does not signify if I knew twenty ways, for he has seen me." �Hello?� he cries, and he puts up his book in his pencil. �There you are! Come on, if you please!� �I suppose I do come on, though in what fashion I know not, being scarcely cognisant of my movements, and solicitous only to appear calm, and above all to control the working muscles of my face, which I feel rebel insolently against my will, and struggle to express what I had resolved to conceal. But I have avail—it is down. I may make shift yet to behave with decent composure." "'And is this Jane Eyre? Are you coming from milk-it and on foot?' "'Yes—just one of your tricks—not to send for a carriage, and come clattering over street and road, like a common mortal—but to steal into the facinage of your home along with twilight, just as if you were a dream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with yourself this last month?' "'I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead.' "'A true Janey in reply. Good angels be my guard. She comes from the other world, from the abode of people who are dead, and tells me so when she meets me alone here in the gloaming. If I dared, I'd touch you to see if you are substance or shadow, you elf. But I'd as soon offer to take hold of a blue, igneous fatus light in a marsh. Truant! Truant!" he added when he had paused an instant. "'Absent from me a whole month, and forgetting me quite I'll be sworn.' I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again, even though broken by the fear that he was so soon deceased to be my master, and by the knowledge that I was nothing to him. But there was ever in Mr. Rochester—so at least I thought—such a wealth of the power of communicating happiness—that to taste but of the crumbs he scattered to stray and stranger birds like me, was to feast genially. His last words were balm. They seemed to imply that it imported something to him whether I forgot him or not. And he had spoken of Thornfield as my home, word that it were my home. He did not leave the style, and I hardly liked to ask to go by. I inquired soon if he had not been to London." "'Yes, I suppose he found that out by second sight?' Mrs. Fairfax told me in a letter. And did she inform me what I went to do?" "'Oh, yes, sir. Everybody knew your errand.' "'You must see the carriage, Jane, and tell me if you don't think it will suit Mrs. Rochester exactly, and whether she won't look like queen-bodied Cheyre, leaning back against those purple cushions. I wished, Jane, I were trifle better adapted to match with her externally. Tell me now, fairie, as you are, can't you give me a charm, or a filter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?' It would be past the power of magic, sir." And in thought, I added, a loving eye is all the charm needed. To such you are handsome enough, or rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty. Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to be incomprehensible. In the present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response, but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think it too good for common purposes. It was the real sunshine of feeling. He shed it over me now. "'Past, Janet,' said he, making room for me to cross the stile, go up home and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend's threshold. All I had now to do was to obey him in silence, no need for me to colloquise further. I got over the stile without a word, and meant to leave him calmly. An impulse held me fast, a force turned me round. I said, or something in me said, in spite of me, "'Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you, and wherever you are is my home, my only home.' I walked on so fast that even he could hardly have overtaken me had he tried. Little Adele was half-wild with the delight when she saw me. Mrs. Fairfax received me with her usual plain friendliness. Leah smiled, and even Sophie bid me bonsoir with glee. This was very pleasant. There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is in addition to their comfort. I that evening shut my eyes resolutely against the future. I stopped my ears against the voice that kept warning me of near separation and coming grief. When tea was over and Mrs. Fairfax had taken her knitting, and I had assumed a low seat near her, and Adele, kneeling on the carpet, had nestled close up to me, and a sense of mutual affection seemed to surround us with a ring of golden peace. I uttered a silent prayer that we might not be parted far or soon. But when, as we thus sat, Mr. Rochester entered, unannounced, and looking at her seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle of a group so amicable, when he said he supposed the old lady was all right now that she had got her adopted daughter back again, and added that he saw Adele was Preta Croquet sa petite maman anglaise. I have ventured to hope that he would, even after his marriage, keep us together somewhere under the shelter of his protection, and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence. A fortnight of dubious calm succeeded my return to Thornfield Hall. Everything was said of the master's marriage, and I saw no preparation going on for such an event. Almost every day I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had yet heard anything decided. Her answer was always in the negative. Once she said she had actually put the question to Mr. Rochester as to when he was going to bring his bride home. But he had answered her only by a joke in one of his queer looks, and she could not tell what to make of him. One thing surprised me, and that was there were no journeyings backward and forward, no visits to Ingram Park. To be sure it was twenty miles off on the borders of another county, but what was that distance to an ardent lover? To so practice in a defatigable horseman as Mr. Rochester, it would be but a morning's ride. I began to cherish hopes I had no right to conceive, that the match was broken off, that rumour had been mistaken, that one or both parties had changed their minds. I used to look at my master's face to see if it was sad or fierce, but I could not remember the time when it had been so uniformly clear of clouds or evil feelings. If, in the moments I and my pupil spent with him, I lacked spirits and sank into inevitable dejection, he became even gay. Never had he called me more frequently to his presence. Never been kinder to me when there, and alas, never had I loved him so well.