I felt Mr. Rochester start and shudder; he hastily flung his arms round me.  “Thank God!” he exclaimed, “that if anything malignant did come near you last night, it was only the veil that was harmed.  Oh, to think what might have happened!”

He drew his breath short, and strained me so close to him, I could scarcely pant.  After some minutes’ silence, he continued, cheerily—

“Now, Janet, I’ll explain to you all about it.  It was half dream, half reality.  A woman did, I doubt not, enter your room: and that woman was—must have been—Grace Poole.  You call her a strange being yourself: from all you know, you have reason so to call her—what did she do to me? what to Mason?  In a state between sleeping and waking, you noticed her entrance and her actions; but feverish, almost delirious as you were, you ascribed to her a goblin appearance different from her own: the long dishevelled hair, the swelled black face, the exaggerated stature, were figments of imagination; results of nightmare: the spiteful tearing of the veil was real: and it is like her.  I see you would ask why I keep such a woman in my house: when we have been married a year and a day, I will tell you; but not now.  Are you satisfied, Jane?  Do you accept my solution of the mystery?”

I reflected, and in truth it appeared to me the only possible one: satisfied I was not, but to please him I endeavoured to appear so—relieved, I certainly did feel; so I answered him with a contented smile.  And now, as it was long past one, I prepared to leave him.

“Does not Sophie sleep with Adèle in the nursery?” he asked, as I lit my candle.

“Yes, sir.”

“And there is room enough in Adèle’s little bed for you.  You must share it with her to-night, Jane: it is no wonder that the incident you have related should make you nervous, and I would rather you did not sleep alone: promise me to go to the nursery.”

“I shall be very glad to do so, sir.”

“And fasten the door securely on the inside.  Wake Sophie when you go upstairs, under pretence of requesting her to rouse you in good time to-morrow; for you must be dressed and have finished breakfast before eight.  And now, no more sombre thoughts: chase dull care away, Janet.  Don’t you hear to what soft whispers the wind has fallen? and there is no more beating of rain against the window-panes: look here” (he lifted up the curtain)—“it is a lovely night!”

It was.  Half heaven was pure and stainless: the clouds, now trooping before the wind, which had shifted to the west, were filing off eastward in long, silvered columns.  The moon shone peacefully.

“Well,” said Mr. Rochester, gazing inquiringly into my eyes, “how is my Janet now?”

“The night is serene, sir; and so am I.”

“And you will not dream of separation and sorrow to-night; but of happy love and blissful union.”

This prediction was but half fulfilled: I did not indeed dream of sorrow, but as little did I dream of joy; for I never slept at all.  With little Adèle in my arms, I watched the slumber of childhood—so tranquil, so passionless, so innocent—and waited for the coming day: all my life was awake and astir in my frame: and as soon as the sun rose I rose too.  I remember Adèle clung to me as I left her: I remember I kissed her as I loosened her little hands from my neck; and I cried over her with strange emotion, and quitted her because I feared my sobs would break her still sound repose.  She seemed the emblem of my past life; and here I was now to array myself to meet, the dread, but adored, type of my unknown future day.

CHAPTER XXVI

Sophie came at seven to dress me: she was very long indeed in accomplishing her task; so long that Mr. Rochester, grown, I suppose, impatient of my delay, sent up to ask why I did not come.  She was just fastening my veil (the plain square of blond after all) to my hair with a brooch; I hurried from under her hands as soon as I could.

“Stop!” she cried in French.  “Look at yourself in the mirror: you have not taken one peep.”

So I turned at the door: I saw a robed and veiled figure, so unlike my usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger.  “Jane!” called a voice, and I hastened down.  I was received at the foot of the stairs by Mr. Rochester.

“Lingerer!” he said, “my brain is on fire with impatience, and you tarry so long!”

He took me into the dining-room, surveyed me keenly all over, pronounced me “fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life, but the desire of his eyes,” and then telling me he would give me but ten minutes to eat some breakfast, he rang the bell.  One of his lately hired servants, a footman, answered it.

“Is John getting the carriage ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is the luggage brought down?”

“They are bringing it down, sir.”

“Go you to the church: see if Mr. Wood (the clergyman) and the clerk are there: return and tell me.”

The church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates; the footman soon returned.

“Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice.”

“And the carriage?”

“The horses are harnessing.”

“We shall not want it to go to church; but it must be ready the moment we return: all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped on, and the coachman in his seat.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Jane, are you ready?”

I rose.  There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait for or marshal: none but Mr. Rochester and I.  Mrs. Fairfax stood in the hall as we passed.   I would fain have spoken to her, but my hand was held by a grasp of iron: I was hurried along by a stride I could hardly follow; and to look at Mr. Rochester’s face was to feel that not a second of delay would be tolerated for any purpose.  I wonder what other bridegroom ever looked as he did—so bent up to a purpose, so grimly resolute: or who, under such steadfast brows, ever revealed such flaming and flashing eyes.

I know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the drive, I gazed neither on sky nor earth: my heart was with my eyes; and both seemed migrated into Mr. Rochester’s frame.  I wanted to see the invisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to fasten a glance fierce and fell.  I wanted to feel the thoughts whose force he seemed breasting and resisting.

At the churchyard wicket he stopped: he discovered I was quite out of breath.  “Am I cruel in my love?” he said.  “Delay an instant: lean on me, Jane.”

And now I can recall the picture of the grey old house of God rising calm before me, of a rook wheeling round the steeple, of a ruddy morning sky beyond.  I remember something, too, of the green grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of strangers straying amongst the low hillocks and reading the mementoes graven on the few mossy head-stones.  I noticed them, because, as they saw us, they passed round to the back of the church; and I doubted not they were going to enter by the side-aisle door and witness the ceremony.  By Mr. Rochester they were not observed; he was earnestly looking at my face from which the blood had, I daresay, momentarily fled: for I felt my forehead dewy, and my cheeks and lips cold.  When I rallied, which I soon did, he walked gently with me up the path to the porch.

We entered the quiet and humble temple; the priest waited in his white surplice at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him.  All was still: two shadows only moved in a remote corner.  My conjecture had been correct: the strangers had slipped in before us, and they now stood by the vault of the Rochesters, their backs towards us, viewing through the rails the old time-stained marble tomb, where a kneeling angel guarded the remains of Damer de Rochester, slain at Marston Moor in the time of the civil wars, and of Elizabeth, his wife.

Our place was taken at the communion rails.  Hearing a cautious step behind me, I glanced over my shoulder: one of the strangers—a gentleman, evidently—was advancing up the chancel.  The service began.  The explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone through; and then the clergyman came a step further forward, and, bending slightly towards Mr. Rochester, went on.

“I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed), that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God’s Word doth allow, are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful.”

He paused, as the custom is.  When is the pause after that sentence ever broken by reply?  Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years.  And the clergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his book, and had held his breath but for a moment, was proceeding: his hand was already stretched towards Mr. Rochester, as his lips unclosed to ask, “Wilt thou have this woman for thy wedded wife?”—when a distinct and near voice said—

“The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment.”

The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute; the clerk did the same; Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had rolled under his feet: taking a firmer footing, and not turning his head or eyes, he said, “Proceed.”

Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with deep but low intonation.  Presently Mr. Wood said—

“I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been asserted, and evidence of its truth or falsehood.”

“The ceremony is quite broken off,” subjoined the voice behind us.  “I am in a condition to prove my allegation: an insuperable impediment to this marriage exists.”

Mr. Rochester heard, but heeded not: he stood stubborn and rigid, making no movement but to possess himself of my hand.  What a hot and strong grasp he had! and how like quarried marble was his pale, firm, massive front at this moment!  How his eye shone, still watchful, and yet wild beneath!

Mr. Wood seemed at a loss.  “What is the nature of the impediment?” he asked.  “Perhaps it may be got over—explained away?”

“Hardly,” was the answer.  “I have called it insuperable, and I speak advisedly.”

The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails.  He continued, uttering each word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not loudly—

“It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage.  Mr. Rochester has a wife now living.”

My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated to thunder—my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt frost or fire; but I was collected, and in no danger of swooning.  I looked at Mr. Rochester: I made him look at me.  His whole face was colourless rock: his eye was both spark and flint.  He disavowed nothing: he seemed as if he would defy all things.  Without speaking, without smiling, without seeming to recognise in me a human being, he only twined my waist with his arm and riveted me to his side.

“Who are you?” he asked of the intruder.

“My name is Briggs, a solicitor of --- Street, London.”

“And you would thrust on me a wife?”

“I would remind you of your lady’s existence, sir, which the law recognises, if you do not.”

“Favour me with an account of her—with her name, her parentage, her place of abode.”

“Certainly.”  Mr. Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket, and read out in a sort of official, nasal voice:—

“‘I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October A.D. --- (a date of fifteen years back), Edward Fairfax Rochester, of Thornfield Hall, in the county of ---, and of Ferndean Manor, in ---shire, England, was married to my sister, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of Jonas Mason, merchant, and of Antoinetta his wife, a Creole, at --- church, Spanish Town, Jamaica.  The record of the marriage will be found in the register of that church—a copy of it is now in my possession.  Signed, Richard Mason.’”

“That—if a genuine document—may prove I have been married, but it does not prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is still living.”

“She was living three months ago,” returned the lawyer.

“How do you know?”

“I have a witness to the fact, whose testimony even you, sir, will scarcely controvert.”

“Produce him—or go to hell.”

“I will produce him first—he is on the spot.  Mr. Mason, have the goodness to step forward.”

Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth; he experienced, too, a sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame.  The second stranger, who had hitherto lingered in the background, now drew near; a pale face looked over the solicitor’s shoulder—yes, it was Mason himself.  Mr. Rochester turned and glared at him.  His eye, as I have often said, was a black eye: it had now a tawny, nay, a bloody light in its gloom; and his face flushed—olive cheek and hueless forehead received a glow as from spreading, ascending heart-fire: and he stirred, lifted his strong arm—he could have struck Mason, dashed him on the church-floor, shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his body—but Mason shrank away, and cried faintly, “Good God!”  Contempt fell cool on Mr. Rochester—his passion died as if a blight had shrivelled it up: he only asked—“What have you to say?”

An inaudible reply escaped Mason’s white lips.

“The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly.  I again demand, what have you to say?”

“Sir—sir,” interrupted the clergyman, “do not forget you are in a sacred place.”  Then addressing Mason, he inquired gently, “Are you aware, sir, whether or not this gentleman’s wife is still living?”

“Courage,” urged the lawyer,—“speak out.”

“She is now living at Thornfield Hall,” said Mason, in more articulate tones: “I saw her there last April.  I am her brother.”

“At Thornfield Hall!” ejaculated the clergyman.  “Impossible!  I am an old resident in this neighbourhood, sir, and I never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at Thornfield Hall.”

I saw a grim smile contort Mr. Rochester’s lips, and he muttered—

“No, by God!  I took care that none should hear of it—or of her under that name.”  He mused—for ten minutes he held counsel with himself: he formed his resolve, and announced it—

“Enough! all shall bolt out at once, like the bullet from the barrel.  Wood, close your book and take off your surplice; John Green (to the clerk), leave the church: there will be no wedding to-day.”  The man obeyed.

Mr. Rochester continued, hardily and recklessly: “Bigamy is an ugly word!—I meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has out-manoeuvred me, or Providence has checked me,—perhaps the last.  I am little better than a devil at this moment; and, as my pastor there would tell me, deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God, even to the quenchless fire and deathless worm.  Gentlemen, my plan is broken up:—what this lawyer and his client say is true: I have been married, and the woman to whom I was married lives!  You say you never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at the house up yonder, Wood; but I daresay you have many a time inclined your ear to gossip about the mysterious lunatic kept there under watch and ward.  Some have whispered to you that she is my bastard half-sister: some, my cast-off mistress.  I now inform you that she is my wife, whom I married fifteen years ago,—Bertha Mason by name; sister of this resolute personage, who is now, with his quivering limbs and white cheeks, showing you what a stout heart men may bear.  Cheer up, Dick!—never fear me!—I’d almost as soon strike a woman as you.  Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations!  Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard!—as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they were silent on family secrets before.  Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points.  I had a charming partner—pure, wise, modest: you can fancy I was a happy man.  I went through rich scenes!  Oh! my experience has been heavenly, if you only knew it!  But I owe you no further explanation.  Briggs, Wood, Mason, I invite you all to come up to the house and visit Mrs. Poole’s patient, and my wife!  You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into espousing, and judge whether or not I had a right to break the compact, and seek sympathy with something at least human.  This girl,” he continued, looking at me, “knew no more than you, Wood, of the disgusting secret: she thought all was fair and legal and never dreamt she was going to be entrapped into a feigned union with a defrauded wretch, already bound to a bad, mad, and embruted partner!  Come all of you—follow!”

Still holding me fast, he left the church: the three gentlemen came after.  At the front door of the hall we found the carriage.

“Take it back to the coach-house, John,” said Mr. Rochester coolly; “it will not be wanted to-day.”

At our entrance, Mrs. Fairfax, Adèle, Sophie, Leah, advanced to meet and greet us.

“To the right-about—every soul!” cried the master; “away with your congratulations!  Who wants them?  Not I!—they are fifteen years too late!”

He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and still beckoning the gentlemen to follow him, which they did.  We mounted the first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third storey: the low, black door, opened by Mr. Rochester’s master-key, admitted us to the tapestried room, with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet.

“You know this place, Mason,” said our guide; “she bit and stabbed you here.”

He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door: this, too, he opened.  In a room without a window, there burnt a fire guarded by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a chain.  Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently cooking something in a saucepan.  In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards.  What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.

“Good-morrow, Mrs. Poole!” said Mr. Rochester.  “How are you? and how is your charge to-day?”

“We’re tolerable, sir, I thank you,” replied Grace, lifting the boiling mess carefully on to the hob: “rather snappish, but not ‘rageous.”

A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favourable report: the clothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet.

“Ah! sir, she sees you!” exclaimed Grace: “you’d better not stay.”

“Only a few moments, Grace: you must allow me a few moments.”

“Take care then, sir!—for God’s sake, take care!”

The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and gazed wildly at her visitors.  I recognised well that purple face,—those bloated features.  Mrs. Poole advanced.

“Keep out of the way,” said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside: “she has no knife now, I suppose, and I’m on my guard.”

“One never knows what she has, sir: she is so cunning: it is not in mortal discretion to fathom her craft.”

“We had better leave her,” whispered Mason.

“Go to the devil!” was his brother-in-law’s recommendation.

“‘Ware!” cried Grace.  The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously.  Mr. Rochester flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek: they struggled.  She was a big woman, in stature almost equalling her husband, and corpulent besides: she showed virile force in the contest—more than once she almost throttled him, athletic as he was.  He could have settled her with a well-planted blow; but he would not strike: he would only wrestle.  At last he mastered her arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and he pinioned them behind her: with more rope, which was at hand, he bound her to a chair.  The operation was performed amidst the fiercest yells and the most convulsive plunges.  Mr. Rochester then turned to the spectators: he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate.

“That is my wife,” said he.  “Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever to know—such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure hours!  And this is what I wished to have” (laying his hand on my shoulder): “this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon, I wanted her just as a change after that fierce ragout.  Wood and Briggs, look at the difference!  Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder—this face with that mask—this form with that bulk; then judge me, priest of the gospel and man of the law, and remember with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged!  Off with you now.  I must shut up my prize.”

We all withdrew.  Mr. Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to give some further order to Grace Poole.  The solicitor addressed me as he descended the stair.

“You, madam,” said he, “are cleared from all blame: your uncle will be glad to hear it—if, indeed, he should be still living—when Mr. Mason returns to Madeira.”

“My uncle!  What of him?  Do you know him?”

“Mr. Mason does.  Mr. Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of his house for some years.  When your uncle received your letter intimating the contemplated union between yourself and Mr. Rochester, Mr. Mason, who was staying at Madeira to recruit his health, on his way back to Jamaica, happened to be with him.  Mr. Eyre mentioned the intelligence; for he knew that my client here was acquainted with a gentleman of the name of Rochester.  Mr. Mason, astonished and distressed as you may suppose, revealed the real state of matters.  Your uncle, I am sorry to say, is now on a sick bed; from which, considering the nature of his disease—decline—and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will ever rise.  He could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate you from the snare into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason to lose no time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage.  He referred him to me for assistance.  I used all despatch, and am thankful I was not too late: as you, doubtless, must be also.  Were I not morally certain that your uncle will be dead ere you reach Madeira, I would advise you to accompany Mr. Mason back; but as it is, I think you had better remain in England till you can hear further, either from or of Mr. Eyre.  Have we anything else to stay for?” he inquired of Mr. Mason.

“No, no—let us be gone,” was the anxious reply; and without waiting to take leave of Mr. Rochester, they made their exit at the hall door.  The clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of admonition or reproof, with his haughty parishioner; this duty done, he too departed.

I heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room, to which I had now withdrawn.  The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded—not to weep, not to mourn, I was yet too calm for that, but—mechanically to take off the wedding dress, and replace it by the stuff gown I had worn yesterday, as I thought, for the last time.  I then sat down: I felt weak and tired.  I leaned my arms on a table, and my head dropped on them.  And now I thought: till now I had only heard, seen, moved—followed up and down where I was led or dragged—watched event rush on event, disclosure open beyond disclosure: but now, I thought.

The morning had been a quiet morning enough—all except the brief scene with the lunatic: the transaction in the church had not been noisy; there was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no defiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken, a calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made; some stern, short questions put by Mr. Rochester; answers, explanations given, evidence adduced; an open admission of the truth had been uttered by my master; then the living proof had been seen; the intruders were gone, and all was over.

I was in my own room as usual—just myself, without obvious change: nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me.  And yet where was the Jane Eyre of yesterday?—where was her life?—where were her prospects?

Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman—almost a bride, was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate.  A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and flagrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway.  My hopes were all dead—struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt.  I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive.  I looked at my love: that feeling which was my master’s—which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr. Rochester’s arms—it could not derive warmth from his breast.  Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted—confidence destroyed!  Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had been; for he was not what I had thought him.  I would not ascribe vice to him; I would not say he had betrayed me; but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea, and from his presence I must go: that I perceived well.  When—how—whither, I could not yet discern; but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield.  Real affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only fitful passion: that was balked; he would want me no more.  I should fear even to cross his path now: my view must be hateful to him.  Oh, how blind had been my eyes!  How weak my conduct!

My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim round me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow.  Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength.  I lay faint, longing to be dead.  One idea only still throbbed life-like within me—a remembrance of God: it begot an unuttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered, but no energy was found to express them—

“Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help.”

It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it—as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips—it came: in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me.  The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass.  That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, “the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.”

CHAPTER XXVII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, sir.”

“Then tell me so roundly and sharply—don’t spare me.”

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

“How are you now, Jane?”

“Much better, sir; I shall be well soon.”

“Taste the wine again, Jane.”

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I do indeed, sir.”

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

“And take Adèle with you, sir,” I interrupted; “she will be a companion for you.”

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

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

“Solitude! solitude!” he reiterated with irritation.  “I see I must come to an explanation.  I don’t know what sphynx-like expression is forming in your countenance.  You are to share my solitude.  Do you understand?”

I shook my head: it required a degree of courage, excited as he was becoming, even to risk that mute sign of dissent.  He had been walking fast about the room, and he stopped, as if suddenly rooted to one spot.  He looked at me long and hard: I turned my eyes from him, fixed them on the fire, and tried to assume and maintain a quiet, collected aspect.

“Now for the hitch in Jane’s character,” he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak.  “The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is.  Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble!  By God!  I long to exert a fraction of Samson’s strength, and break the entanglement like tow!”

He recommenced his walk, but soon again stopped, and this time just before me.

“Jane! will you hear reason?” (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear); “because, if you won’t, I’ll try violence.”  His voice was hoarse; his look that of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild license.  I saw that in another moment, and with one impetus of frenzy more, I should be able to do nothing with him.  The present—the passing second of time—was all I had in which to control and restrain him—a movement of repulsion, flight, fear would have sealed my doom,—and his.  But I was not afraid: not in the least.  I felt an inward power; a sense of influence, which supported me.  The crisis was perilous; but not without its charm: such as the Indian, perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe.  I took hold of his clenched hand, loosened the contorted fingers, and said to him, soothingly—

“Sit down; I’ll talk to you as long as you like, and hear all you have to say, whether reasonable or unreasonable.”

He sat down: but he did not get leave to speak directly.  I had been struggling with tears for some time: I had taken great pains to repress them, because I knew he would not like to see me weep.  Now, however, I considered it well to let them flow as freely and as long as they liked.  If the flood annoyed him, so much the better.  So I gave way and cried heartily.

Soon I heard him earnestly entreating me to be composed.  I said I could not while he was in such a passion.

“But I am not angry, Jane: I only love you too well; and you had steeled your little pale face with such a resolute, frozen look, I could not endure it.  Hush, now, and wipe your eyes.”

His softened voice announced that he was subdued; so I, in my turn, became calm.  Now he made an effort to rest his head on my shoulder, but I would not permit it.  Then he would draw me to him: no.

“Jane! Jane!” he said, in such an accent of bitter sadness it thrilled along every nerve I had; “you don’t love me, then?  It was only my station, and the rank of my wife, that you valued?  Now that you think me disqualified to become your husband, you recoil from my touch as if I were some toad or ape.”

These words cut me: yet what could I do or I say?  I ought probably to have done or said nothing; but I was so tortured by a sense of remorse at thus hurting his feelings, I could not control the wish to drop balm where I had wounded.

“I do love you,” I said, “more than ever: but I must not show or indulge the feeling: and this is the last time I must express it.”

“The last time, Jane!  What! do you think you can live with me, and see me daily, and yet, if you still love me, be always cold and distant?”

“No, sir; that I am certain I could not; and therefore I see there is but one way: but you will be furious if I mention it.”

“Oh, mention it!  If I storm, you have the art of weeping.”

“Mr. Rochester, I must leave you.”

“For how long, Jane?  For a few minutes, while you smooth your hair—which is somewhat dishevelled; and bathe your face—which looks feverish?”

“I must leave Adèle and Thornfield.  I must part with you for my whole life: I must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange scenes.”

“Of course: I told you you should.  I pass over the madness about parting from me.  You mean you must become a part of me.  As to the new existence, it is all right: you shall yet be my wife: I am not married.  You shall be Mrs. Rochester—both virtually and nominally.  I shall keep only to you so long as you and I live.  You shall go to a place I have in the south of France: a whitewashed villa on the shores of the Mediterranean.  There you shall live a happy, and guarded, and most innocent life.  Never fear that I wish to lure you into error—to make you my mistress.  Why did you shake your head?  Jane, you must be reasonable, or in truth I shall again become frantic.”

His voice and hand quivered: his large nostrils dilated; his eye blazed: still I dared to speak.

“Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself.  If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your mistress: to say otherwise is sophistical—is false.”

“Jane, I am not a gentle-tempered man—you forget that: I am not long-enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate.  Out of pity to me and yourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and—beware!”

He bared his wrist, and offered it to me: the blood was forsaking his cheek and lips, they were growing livid; I was distressed on all hands.  To agitate him thus deeply, by a resistance he so abhorred, was cruel: to yield was out of the question.  I did what human beings do instinctively when they are driven to utter extremity—looked for aid to one higher than man: the words “God help me!” burst involuntarily from my lips.

“I am a fool!” cried Mr. Rochester suddenly.  “I keep telling her I am not married, and do not explain to her why.  I forget she knows nothing of the character of that woman, or of the circumstances attending my infernal union with her.  Oh, I am certain Jane will agree with me in opinion, when she knows all that I know!  Just put your hand in mine, Janet—that I may have the evidence of touch as well as sight, to prove you are near me—and I will in a few words show you the real state of the case.  Can you listen to me?”

“Yes, sir; for hours if you will.”

“I ask only minutes.  Jane, did you ever hear or know that I was not the eldest son of my house: that I had once a brother older than I?”

“I remember Mrs. Fairfax told me so once.”

“And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious, grasping man?”

“I have understood something to that effect.”

“Well, Jane, being so, it was his resolution to keep the property together; he could not bear the idea of dividing his estate and leaving me a fair portion: all, he resolved, should go to my brother, Rowland.  Yet as little could he endure that a son of his should be a poor man.  I must be provided for by a wealthy marriage.  He sought me a partner betimes.  Mr. Mason, a West India planter and merchant, was his old acquaintance.  He was certain his possessions were real and vast: he made inquiries.  Mr. Mason, he found, had a son and daughter; and he learned from him that he could and would give the latter a fortune of thirty thousand pounds: that sufficed.  When I left college, I was sent out to Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me.  My father said nothing about her money; but he told me Miss Mason was the boast of Spanish Town for her beauty: and this was no lie.  I found her a fine woman, in the style of Blanche Ingram: tall, dark, and majestic.  Her family wished to secure me because I was of a good race; and so did she.  They showed her to me in parties, splendidly dressed.  I seldom saw her alone, and had very little private conversation with her.  She flattered me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and accomplishments.  All the men in her circle seemed to admire her and envy me.  I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her.  There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission.  Her relatives encouraged me; competitors piqued me; she allured me: a marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was.  Oh, I have no respect for myself when I think of that act!—an agony of inward contempt masters me.  I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her.  I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her nature: I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement in her mind or manners—and, I married her:—gross, grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was!  With less sin I might have—But let me remember to whom I am speaking.”

“My bride’s mother I had never seen: I understood she was dead.  The honeymoon over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and shut up in a lunatic asylum.  There was a younger brother, too—a complete dumb idiot.  The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom I cannot hate, whilst I abhor all his kindred, because he has some grains of affection in his feeble mind, shown in the continued interest he takes in his wretched sister, and also in a dog-like attachment he once bore me), will probably be in the same state one day.  My father and my brother Rowland knew all this; but they thought only of the thirty thousand pounds, and joined in the plot against me.”

“These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger—when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort; that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile—when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders—even then I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt.

“Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details: some strong words shall express what I have to say.  I lived with that woman upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check them, and I would not use cruelty.  What a pigmy intellect she had, and what giant propensities!  How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me!  Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste.

“My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four years my father died too.  I was rich enough now—yet poor to hideous indigence: a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of me.  And I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings: for the doctors now discovered that my wife was mad—her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity.  Jane, you don’t like my narrative; you look almost sick—shall I defer the rest to another day?”

“No, sir, finish it now; I pity you—I do earnestly pity you.”

“Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them.  But that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this moment—with which your eyes are now almost overflowing—with which your heart is heaving—with which your hand is trembling in mine.  Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love: its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion.  I accept it, Jane; let the daughter have free advent—my arms wait to receive her.”

“Now, sir, proceed; what did you do when you found she was mad?”

“Jane, I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self-respect was all that intervened between me and the gulf.  In the eyes of the world, I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour; but I resolved to be clean in my own sight—and to the last I repudiated the contamination of her crimes, and wrenched myself from connection with her mental defects.  Still, society associated my name and person with hers; I yet saw her and heard her daily: something of her breath (faugh!) mixed with the air I breathed; and besides, I remembered I had once been her husband—that recollection was then, and is now, inexpressibly odious to me; moreover, I knew that while she lived I could never be the husband of another and better wife; and, though five years my senior (her family and her father had lied to me even in the particular of her age), she was likely to live as long as I, being as robust in frame as she was infirm in mind.  Thus, at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless.

“One night I had been awakened by her yells—(since the medical men had pronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up)—it was a fiery West Indian night; one of the description that frequently precede the hurricanes of those climates.  Being unable to sleep in bed, I got up and opened the window.  The air was like sulphur-steams—I could find no refreshment anywhere.  Mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room; the sea, which I could hear from thence, rumbled dull like an earthquake—black clouds were casting up over it; the moon was setting in the waves, broad and red, like a hot cannon-ball—she threw her last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest.  I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with such language!—no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she: though two rooms off, I heard every word—the thin partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish cries.

“‘This life,’ said I at last, ‘is hell: this is the air—those are the sounds of the bottomless pit!  I have a right to deliver myself from it if I can.  The sufferings of this mortal state will leave me with the heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul.  Of the fanatic’s burning eternity I have no fear: there is not a future state worse than this present one—let me break away, and go home to God!’

“I said this whilst I knelt down at, and unlocked a trunk which contained a brace of loaded pistols: I mean to shoot myself.  I only entertained the intention for a moment; for, not being insane, the crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair, which had originated the wish and design of self-destruction, was past in a second.

“A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through the open casement: the storm broke, streamed, thundered, blazed, and the air grew pure.  I then framed and fixed a resolution.  While I walked under the dripping orange-trees of my wet garden, and amongst its drenched pomegranates and pine-apples, and while the refulgent dawn of the tropics kindled round me—I reasoned thus, Jane—and now listen; for it was true Wisdom that consoled me in that hour, and showed me the right path to follow.

“The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed leaves, and the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty; my heart, dried up and scorched for a long time, swelled to the tone, and filled with living blood—my being longed for renewal—my soul thirsted for a pure draught.  I saw hope revive—and felt regeneration possible.  From a flowery arch at the bottom of my garden I gazed over the sea—bluer than the sky: the old world was beyond; clear prospects opened thus:—

“‘Go,’ said Hope, ‘and live again in Europe: there it is not known what a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you.  You may take the maniac with you to England; confine her with due attendance and precautions at Thornfield: then travel yourself to what clime you will, and form what new tie you like.  That woman, who has so abused your long-suffering, so sullied your name, so outraged your honour, so blighted your youth, is not your wife, nor are you her husband.  See that she is cared for as her condition demands, and you have done all that God and humanity require of you.  Let her identity, her connection with yourself, be buried in oblivion: you are bound to impart them to no living being.  Place her in safety and comfort: shelter her degradation with secrecy, and leave her.’

“I acted precisely on this suggestion.  My father and brother had not made my marriage known to their acquaintance; because, in the very first letter I wrote to apprise them of the union—having already begun to experience extreme disgust of its consequences, and, from the family character and constitution, seeing a hideous future opening to me—I added an urgent charge to keep it secret: and very soon the infamous conduct of the wife my father had selected for me was such as to make him blush to own her as his daughter-in-law.  Far from desiring to publish the connection, he became as anxious to conceal it as myself.

“To England, then, I conveyed her; a fearful voyage I had with such a monster in the vessel.  Glad was I when I at last got her to Thornfield, and saw her safely lodged in that third-storey room, of whose secret inner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild beast’s den—a goblin’s cell.  I had some trouble in finding an attendant for her, as it was necessary to select one on whose fidelity dependence could be placed; for her ravings would inevitably betray my secret: besides, she had lucid intervals of days—sometimes weeks—which she filled up with abuse of me.  At last I hired Grace Poole from the Grimbsy Retreat.  She and the surgeon, Carter (who dressed Mason’s wounds that night he was stabbed and worried), are the only two I have ever admitted to my confidence.  Mrs. Fairfax may indeed have suspected something, but she could have gained no precise knowledge as to facts.  Grace has, on the whole, proved a good keeper; though, owing partly to a fault of her own, of which it appears nothing can cure her, and which is incident to her harassing profession, her vigilance has been more than once lulled and baffled.  The lunatic is both cunning and malignant; she has never failed to take advantage of her guardian’s temporary lapses; once to secrete the knife with which she stabbed her brother, and twice to possess herself of the key of her cell, and issue therefrom in the night-time.  On the first of these occasions, she perpetrated the attempt to burn me in my bed; on the second, she paid that ghastly visit to you.  I thank Providence, who watched over you, that she then spent her fury on your wedding apparel, which perhaps brought back vague reminiscences of her own bridal days: but on what might have happened, I cannot endure to reflect.  When I think of the thing which flew at my throat this morning, hanging its black and scarlet visage over the nest of my dove, my blood curdles—”

“And what, sir,” I asked, while he paused, “did you do when you had settled her here?  Where did you go?”

“What did I do, Jane?  I transformed myself into a will-o’-the-wisp.  Where did I go?  I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the March-spirit.  I sought the Continent, and went devious through all its lands.  My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent woman, whom I could love: a contrast to the fury I left at Thornfield—”

“But you could not marry, sir.”

“I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought.  It was not my original intention to deceive, as I have deceived you.  I meant to tell my tale plainly, and make my proposals openly: and it appeared to me so absolutely rational that I should be considered free to love and be loved, I never doubted some woman might be found willing and able to understand my case and accept me, in spite of the curse with which I was burdened.”

“Well, sir?”

“When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile.  You open your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless movement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you, and you wanted to read the tablet of one’s heart.  But before I go on, tell me what you mean by your ‘Well, sir?’  It is a small phrase very frequent with you; and which many a time has drawn me on and on through interminable talk: I don’t very well know why.”

“I mean,—What next?  How did you proceed?  What came of such an event?”

“Precisely! and what do you wish to know now?”

“Whether you found any one you liked: whether you asked her to marry you; and what she said.”

“I can tell you whether I found any one I liked, and whether I asked her to marry me: but what she said is yet to be recorded in the book of Fate.  For ten long years I roved about, living first in one capital, then another: sometimes in St. Petersburg; oftener in Paris; occasionally in Rome, Naples, and Florence.  Provided with plenty of money and the passport of an old name, I could choose my own society: no circles were closed against me.  I sought my ideal of a woman amongst English ladies, French countesses, Italian signoras, and German gräfinnen.  I could not find her.  Sometimes, for a fleeting moment, I thought I caught a glance, heard a tone, beheld a form, which announced the realisation of my dream: but I was presently undeserved.  You are not to suppose that I desired perfection, either of mind or person.  I longed only for what suited me—for the antipodes of the Creole: and I longed vainly.  Amongst them all I found not one whom, had I been ever so free, I—warned as I was of the risks, the horrors, the loathings of incongruous unions—would have asked to marry me.  Disappointment made me reckless.  I tried dissipation—never debauchery: that I hated, and hate.  That was my Indian Messalina’s attribute: rooted disgust at it and her restrained me much, even in pleasure.  Any enjoyment that bordered on riot seemed to approach me to her and her vices, and I eschewed it.

“Yet I could not live alone; so I tried the companionship of mistresses.  The first I chose was Céline Varens—another of those steps which make a man spurn himself when he recalls them.  You already know what she was, and how my liaison with her terminated.  She had two successors: an Italian, Giacinta, and a German, Clara; both considered singularly handsome.  What was their beauty to me in a few weeks?  Giacinta was unprincipled and violent: I tired of her in three months.  Clara was honest and quiet; but heavy, mindless, and unimpressible: not one whit to my taste.  I was glad to give her a sufficient sum to set her up in a good line of business, and so get decently rid of her.  But, Jane, I see by your face you are not forming a very favourable opinion of me just now.  You think me an unfeeling, loose-principled rake: don’t you?”

“I don’t like you so well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir.  Did it not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way, first with one mistress and then another?  You talk of it as a mere matter of course.”

“It was with me; and I did not like it.  It was a grovelling fashion of existence: I should never like to return to it.  Hiring a mistress is the next worse thing to buying a slave: both are often by nature, and always by position, inferior: and to live familiarly with inferiors is degrading.  I now hate the recollection of the time I passed with Céline, Giacinta, and Clara.”

I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching that had ever been instilled into me, as—under any pretext—with any justification—through any temptation—to become the successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory.  I did not give utterance to this conviction: it was enough to feel it.  I impressed it on my heart, that it might remain there to serve me as aid in the time of trial.

“Now, Jane, why don’t you say ‘Well, sir?’  I have not done.  You are looking grave.  You disapprove of me still, I see.  But let me come to the point.  Last January, rid of all mistresses—in a harsh, bitter frame of mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely life—corroded with disappointment, sourly disposed against all men, and especially against all womankind (for I began to regard the notion of an intellectual, faithful, loving woman as a mere dream), recalled by business, I came back to England.

“On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall.  Abhorred spot!  I expected no peace—no pleasure there.  On a stile in Hay Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself.  I passed it as negligently as I did the pollard willow opposite to it: I had no presentiment of what it would be to me; no inward warning that the arbitress of my life—my genius for good or evil—waited there in humble guise.  I did not know it, even when, on the occasion of Mesrour’s accident, it came up and gravely offered me help.  Childish and slender creature!  It seemed as if a linnet had hopped to my foot and proposed to bear me on its tiny wing.  I was surly; but the thing would not go: it stood by me with strange perseverance, and looked and spoke with a sort of authority.  I must be aided, and by that hand: and aided I was.

“When once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new—a fresh sap and sense—stole into my frame.  It was well I had learnt that this elf must return to me—that it belonged to my house down below—or I could not have felt it pass away from under my hand, and seen it vanish behind the dim hedge, without singular regret.  I heard you come home that night, Jane, though probably you were not aware that I thought of you or watched for you.  The next day I observed you—myself unseen—for half-an-hour, while you played with Adèle in the gallery.  It was a snowy day, I recollect, and you could not go out of doors.  I was in my room; the door was ajar: I could both listen and watch.  Adèle claimed your outward attention for a while; yet I fancied your thoughts were elsewhere: but you were very patient with her, my little Jane; you talked to her and amused her a long time.  When at last she left you, you lapsed at once into deep reverie: you betook yourself slowly to pace the gallery.  Now and then, in passing a casement, you glanced out at the thick-falling snow; you listened to the sobbing wind, and again you paced gently on and dreamed.  I think those day visions were not dark: there was a pleasurable illumination in your eye occasionally, a soft excitement in your aspect, which told of no bitter, bilious, hypochondriac brooding: your look revealed rather the sweet musings of youth when its spirit follows on willing wings the flight of Hope up and on to an ideal heaven.  The voice of Mrs. Fairfax, speaking to a servant in the hall, wakened you: and how curiously you smiled to and at yourself, Janet!  There was much sense in your smile: it was very shrewd, and seemed to make light of your own abstraction.  It seemed to say—‘My fine visions are all very well, but I must not forget they are absolutely unreal.  I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my brain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough tract to travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter.’  You ran downstairs and demanded of Mrs. Fairfax some occupation: the weekly house accounts to make up, or something of that sort, I think it was.  I was vexed with you for getting out of my sight.