This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me,and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. “Oh, comply!” it said. “Think of his misery; think of his danger—look at his state when left alone;remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair—soothe him; save him;love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for _you_?or who will be injured by what you do?”
Still indomitable was the reply—“_I_ care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless,the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God;sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane,and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation:they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour;stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now,it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire,and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions,foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.”
I did. Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so.His fury was wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a moment, whatever followed;he crossed the floor and seized my arm and grasped my waist.He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance: physically, I felt, at the moment,powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and glow of a furnace: mentally,I still possessed my soul, and with it the certainty of ultimate safety. The soul, fortunately,has an interpreter—often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter—in the eye.My eye rose to his; and while I looked in his fierce face I gave an involuntary sigh;his gripe was painful, and my over-taxed strength almost exhausted.
“Never,” said he, as he ground his teeth, “never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!” (And he shook me with the force of his hold.) “I could bend her with my finger and thumb:and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her?Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me,with more than courage—with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage,I cannot get at it—the savage, beautiful creature!If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose.Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place.And it is you, spirit—with will and energy, and virtue and purity—that I want:not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart,if you would: seized against your will,you will elude the grasp like an essence—you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh!come, Jane, come!”
As he said this, he released me from his clutch, and only looked at me.The look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain: only an idiot, however,would have succumbed now. I had dared and baffled his fury; I must elude his sorrow: I retired to the door.
“You are going, Jane?”
“I am going, sir.”
“You are leaving me?”
“Yes.”
“You will not come?You will not be my comforter, my rescuer?My deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?”
What unutterable pathos was in his voice!How hard it was to reiterate firmly, “I am going.”
“Jane!”
“Mr. Rochester!”
“Withdraw, then,—I consent; but remember, you leave me here in anguish. Go up to your own room;think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings—think of me.”
He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. “Oh, Jane!my hope—my love—my life!” broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a deep, strong sob.
I had already gained the door; but, reader,I walked back—walked back as determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him;I turned his face from the cushion to me; I kissed his cheek; I smoothed his hair with my hand.
“God bless you, my dear master!” I said. “God keep you from harm and wrong—direct you,solace you—reward you well for your past kindness to me.”
“Little Jane’s love would have been my best reward,” he answered; “without it, my heart is broken.But Jane will give me her love: yes—nobly, generously.”
Up the blood rushed to his face; forth flashed the fire from his eyes; erect he sprang;he held his arms out; but I evaded the embrace, and at once quitted the room.
“Farewell!” was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added, “Farewell for ever!”
That night I never thought to sleep; but a slumber fell on me as soon as I lay down in bed.I was transported in thought to the scenes of childhood:I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead; that the night was dark,and my mind impressed with strange fears. The light that long ago had struck me into syncope,recalled in this vision, seemed glidingly to mount the wall,and tremblingly to pause in the centre of the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head to look:the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim;the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever.I watched her come—watched with the strangest anticipation;as though some word of doom were to be written on her disk.She broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud:a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon,but a white human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward.It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my heart—
“My daughter, flee temptation.”
“Mother, I will.”
So I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream. It was yet night,but July nights are short: soon after midnight, dawn comes.“It cannot be too early to commence the task I have to fulfil,” thought I. I rose: I was dressed;for I had taken off nothing but my shoes. I knew where to find in my drawers some linen, a locket,a ring. In seeking these articles, I encountered the beads of a pearl necklace Mr.Rochester had forced me to accept a few days ago. I left that; it was not mine:it was the visionary bride’s who had melted in air. The other articles I made up in a parcel;my purse, containing twenty shillings (it was all I had), I put in my pocket:I tied on my straw bonnet, pinned my shawl, took the parcel and my slippers,which I would not put on yet, and stole from my room.
“Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax!” I whispered, as I glided past her door. “Farewell, my darling Adèle!” I said, as I glanced towards the nursery. No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace her.I had to deceive a fine ear: for aught I knew it might now be listening.
I would have got past Mr. Rochester’s chamber without a pause;but my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced to stop also.No sleep was there: the inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall;and again and again he sighed while I listened.There was a heaven—a temporary heaven—in this room for me, if I chose: I had but to go in and to say—
“Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till death,” and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought of this.
That kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with impatience for day.He would send for me in the morning; I should be gone. He would have me sought for: vainly.He would feel himself forsaken; his love rejected: he would suffer; perhaps grow desperate.I thought of this too. My hand moved towards the lock: I caught it back, and glided on.
Drearily I wound my way downstairs: I knew what I had to do, and I did it mechanically.I sought the key of the side-door in the kitchen; I sought, too, a phial of oil and a feather;I oiled the key and the lock. I got some water, I got some bread:for perhaps I should have to walk far; and my strength, sorely shaken of late, must not break down.All this I did without one sound. I opened the door, passed out, shut it softly.Dim dawn glimmered in the yard. The great gates were closed and locked;but a wicket in one of them was only latched. Through that I departed: it, too, I shut; and now I was out of Thornfield.
A mile off, beyond the fields, lay a road which stretched in the contrary direction to Millcote;a road I had never travelled, but often noticed, and wondered where it led:thither I bent my steps. No reflection was to be allowed now: not one glance was to be cast back;not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future.The first was a page so heavenly sweet—so deadly sad—that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy.The last was an awful blank: something like the world when the deluge was gone by.
I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise.I believe it was a lovely summer morning: I know my shoes,which I had put on when I left the house, were soon wet with dew.But I looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature.He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold,thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block and axe-edge;of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave gaping at the end:and I thought of drear flight and homeless wandering—and oh!with agony I thought of what I left. I could not help it.I thought of him now—in his room—watching the sunrise;hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him and be his. I longed to be his;I panted to return: it was not too late; I could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement.As yet my flight, I was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and be his comforter—his pride;his redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin. Oh,that fear of his self-abandonment—far worse than my abandonment—how it goaded me!It was a barbed arrow-head in my breast; it tore me when I tried to extract it;it sickened me when remembrance thrust it farther in. Birds began singing in brake and copse:birds were faithful to their mates; birds were emblems of love. What was I?In the midst of my pain of heart and frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself.I had no solace from self-approbation: none even from self-respect.I had injured—wounded—left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes. Still I could not turn,nor retrace one step. God must have led me on. As to my own will or conscience,impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled the other.I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way: fast, fast I went like one delirious.A weakness, beginning inwardly, extending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell:I lay on the ground some minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf.I had some fear—or hope—that here I should die: but I was soon up;crawling forwards on my hands and knees,and then again raised to my feet—as eager and as determined as ever to reach the road.
When I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge; and while I sat, I heard wheels,and saw a coach come on. I stood up and lifted my hand; it stopped. I asked where it was going:the driver named a place a long way off, and where I was sure Mr. Rochester had no connections.I asked for what sum he would take me there; he said thirty shillings; I answered I had but twenty;well, he would try to make it do. He further gave me leave to get into the inside,as the vehicle was empty: I entered, was shut in, and it rolled on its way.
Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt!May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine.May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in that hour left my lips;for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Two days are passed. It is a summer evening;the coachman has set me down at a place called Whitcross;he could take me no farther for the sum I had given,and I was not possessed of another shilling in the world. The coach is a mile off by this time;I am alone. At this moment I discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the pocket of the coach,where I had placed it for safety; there it remains, there it must remain; and now, I am absolutely destitute.
Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet; it is but a stone pillar set up where four roads meet:whitewashed, I suppose, to be more obvious at a distance and in darkness.Four arms spring from its summit: the nearest town to which these point is,according to the inscription, distant ten miles; the farthest, above twenty.From the well-known names of these towns I learn in what county I have lighted;a north-midland shire, dusk with moorland, ridged with mountain: this I see.There are great moors behind and on each hand of me;there are waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at my feet.The population here must be thin, and I see no passengers on these roads: they stretch out east,west, north, and south—white, broad, lonely; they are all cut in the moor,and the heather grows deep and wild to their very verge. Yet a chance traveller might pass by;and I wish no eye to see me now: strangers would wonder what I am doing,lingering here at the sign-post, evidently objectless and lost. I might be questioned:I could give no answer but what would sound incredible and excite suspicion.Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment—not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are—none that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me. I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and ask repose.
I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside;I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I turned with its turnings,and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it.High banks of moor were about me; the crag protected my head: the sky was over that.
Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here:I had a vague dread that wild cattle might be near,or that some sportsman or poacher might discover me. If a gust of wind swept the waste,I looked up, fearing it was the rush of a bull; if a plover whistled, I imagined it a man.Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however,and calmed by the deep silence that reigned as evening declined at nightfall, I took confidence.As yet I had not thought; I had only listened, watched, dreaded;now I regained the faculty of reflection.
What was I to do?Where to go?Oh, intolerable questions, when I could do nothing and go nowhere!—when a long way must yet be measured by my weary,trembling limbs before I could reach human habitation—when cold charity must be entreated before I could get a lodging:reluctant sympathy importuned, almost certain repulse incurred,before my tale could be listened to, or one of my wants relieved!
I touched the heath: it was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the summer day. I looked at the sky;it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm ridge. The dew fell,but with propitious softness; no breeze whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and good;I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust,rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness. To-night, at least, I would be her guest,as I was her child: my mother would lodge me without money and without price.I had one morsel of bread yet: the remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed through at noon with a stray penny—my last coin.I saw ripe bilberries gleaming here and there, like jet beads in the heath:I gathered a handful and ate them with the bread. My hunger, sharp before, was, if not satisfied,appeased by this hermit’s meal. I said my evening prayers at its conclusion, and then chose my couch.
I said my evening prayers
Beside the crag the heath was very deep: when I lay down my feet were buried in it;rising high on each side, it left only a narrow space for the night-air to invade.I folded my shawl double, and spread it over me for a coverlet; a low, mossy swell was my pillow.Thus lodged, I was not, at least at the commencement of the night, cold.
My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. It plained of its gaping wounds,its inward bleeding, its riven chords. It trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom;it bemoaned him with bitter pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing; and,impotent as a bird with both wings broken,it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him.
Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was come,and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear.We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us;and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course,that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes,saw the mighty Milky-way. Remembering what it was—what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light—I felt the might and strength of God.Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made:convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured.I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr.Rochester was safe: he was God’s, and by God would he be guarded.I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long in sleep forgot sorrow.
But next day, Want came to me pale and bare. Long after the little birds had left their nests;long after bees had come in the sweet prime of day to gather the heath honey before the dew was dried—when the long morning shadows were curtailed,and the sun filled earth and sky—I got up, and I looked round me.
What a still, hot, perfect day!What a golden desert this spreading moor!Everywhere sunshine. I wished I could live in it and on it. I saw a lizard run over the crag;I saw a bee busy among the sweet bilberries. I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard,that I might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter here. But I was a human being,and had a human being’s wants: I must not linger where there was nothing to supply them. I rose;I looked back at the bed I had left. Hopeless of the future,I wished but this—that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept;and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate,had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness. Life, however,was yet in my possession, with all its requirements, and pains, and responsibilities.The burden must be carried; the want provided for; the suffering endured;the responsibility fulfilled. I set out.
Whitcross regained, I followed a road which led from the sun, now fervent and high.By no other circumstance had I will to decide my choice. I walked a long time,and when I thought I had nearly done enough,and might conscientiously yield to the fatigue that almost overpowered me—might relax this forced action,and, sitting down on a stone I saw near,submit resistlessly to the apathy that clogged heart and limb—I heard a bell chime—a church bell.
I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the romantic hills,whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a spire.All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture-fields, and cornfields, and wood;and a glittering stream ran zig-zag through the varied shades of green, the mellowing grain,the sombre woodland, the clear and sunny lea.Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to the road before me,I saw a heavily-laden waggon labouring up the hill,and not far beyond were two cows and their drover. Human life and human labour were near.I must struggle on: strive to live and bend to toil like the rest.
About two o’clock P.M. I entered the village.At the bottom of its one street there was a little shop with some cakes of bread in the window.I coveted a cake of bread. With that refreshment I could perhaps regain a degree of energy:without it, it would be difficult to proceed.The wish to have some strength and some vigour returned to me as soon as I was amongst my fellow-beings.I felt it would be degrading to faint with hunger on the causeway of a hamlet.Had I nothing about me I could offer in exchange for one of these rolls?I considered. I had a small silk handkerchief tied round my throat; I had my gloves.I could hardly tell how men and women in extremities of destitution proceeded.I did not know whether either of these articles would be accepted: probably they would not; but I must try.
I entered the shop: a woman was there. Seeing a respectably-dressed person, a lady as she supposed,she came forward with civility. How could she serve me?I was seized with shame: my tongue would not utter the request I had prepared.I dared not offer her the half-worn gloves, the creased handkerchief: besides,I felt it would be absurd. I only begged permission to sit down a moment, as I was tired.Disappointed in the expectation of a customer, she coolly acceded to my request.She pointed to a seat; I sank into it. I felt sorely urged to weep;but conscious how unseasonable such a manifestation would be, I restrained it.Soon I asked her “if there were any dressmaker or plain-workwoman in the village?”
“Yes; two or three. Quite as many as there was employment for.”
I reflected. I was driven to the point now. I was brought face to face with Necessity.I stood in the position of one without a resource, without a friend, without a coin. I must do something. What?I must apply somewhere. Where?
“Did she know of any place in the neighbourhood where a servant was wanted?”
“Nay; she couldn’t say.”
“What was the chief trade in this place?What did most of the people do?”
“Some were farm labourers; a good deal worked at Mr. Oliver’s needle-factory, and at the foundry.”
“Did Mr. Oliver employ women?”
“Nay; it was men’s work.”
“And what do the women do?”
“I knawn’t,” was the answer. “Some does one thing, and some another. Poor folk mun get on as they can.”
She seemed to be tired of my questions: and, indeed, what claim had I to importune her?A neighbour or two came in; my chair was evidently wanted. I took leave.
I passed up the street, looking as I went at all the houses to the right hand and to the left;but I could discover no pretext, nor see an inducement to enter any. I rambled round the hamlet,going sometimes to a little distance and returning again, for an hour or more. Much exhausted,and suffering greatly now for want of food,I turned aside into a lane and sat down under the hedge. Ere many minutes had elapsed,I was again on my feet, however, and again searching something—a resource,or at least an informant. A pretty little house stood at the top of the lane,with a garden before it, exquisitely neat and brilliantly blooming. I stopped at it.What business had I to approach the white door or touch the glittering knocker?In what way could it possibly be the interest of the inhabitants of that dwelling to serve me?Yet I drew near and knocked. A mild-looking, cleanly-attired young woman opened the door.In such a voice as might be expected from a hopeless heart and fainting frame—a voice wretchedly low and faltering—I asked if a servant was wanted here?
“No,” said she; “we do not keep a servant.”
“Can you tell me where I could get employment of any kind?” I continued. “I am a stranger, without acquaintance in this place. I want some work: no matter what.”
But it was not her business to think for me, or to seek a place for me: besides, in her eyes,how doubtful must have appeared my character, position, tale. She shook her head,she “was sorry she could give me no information,” and the white door closed,quite gently and civilly: but it shut me out. If she had held it open a little longer,I believe I should have begged a piece of bread; for I was now brought low.
I could not bear to return to the sordid village, where, besides, no prospect of aid was visible.I should have longed rather to deviate to a wood I saw not far off,which appeared in its thick shade to offer inviting shelter; but I was so sick, so weak,so gnawed with nature’s cravings, instinct kept me roaming round abodes where there was a chance of food.Solitude would be no solitude—rest no rest—while the vulture, hunger, thus sank beak and talons in my side.
I drew near houses; I left them, and came back again, and again I wandered away:always repelled by the consciousness of having no claim to ask—no right to expect interest in my isolated lot.Meantime, the afternoon advanced, while I thus wandered about like a lost and starving dog.In crossing a field, I saw the church spire before me: I hastened towards it. Near the churchyard,and in the middle of a garden, stood a well-built though small house,which I had no doubt was the parsonage.I remembered that strangers who arrive at a place where they have no friends,and who want employment, sometimes apply to the clergyman for introduction and aid.It is the clergyman’s function to help—at least with advice—those who wished to help themselves.I seemed to have something like a right to seek counsel here. Renewing then my courage,and gathering my feeble remains of strength, I pushed on. I reached the house,and knocked at the kitchen-door. An old woman opened: I asked was this the parsonage?
“Yes.”
“Was the clergyman in?”
“No.”
“Would he be in soon?”
“No, he was gone from home.”
“To a distance?”
“Not so far—happen three mile. He had been called away by the sudden death of his father:he was at Marsh End now, and would very likely stay there a fortnight longer.”
“Was there any lady of the house?”
“Nay, there was naught but her, and she was housekeeper;” and of her, reader,I could not bear to ask the relief for want of which I was sinking; I could not yet beg; and again I crawled away.
Once more I took off my handkerchief—once more I thought of the cakes of bread in the little shop. Oh, for but a crust!for but one mouthful to allay the pang of famine!Instinctively I turned my face again to the village; I found the shop again, and I went in;and though others were there besides the woman I ventured the request—“Would she give me a roll for this handkerchief?”
She looked at me with evident suspicion: “Nay, she never sold stuff i’ that way.”
Almost desperate, I asked for half a cake; she again refused.“How could she tell where I had got the handkerchief?” she said.
“Would she take my gloves?”
“No!what could she do with them?”
Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details.Some say there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past;but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral degradation,blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on.I blamed none of those who repulsed me. I felt it was what was to be expected,and what could not be helped: an ordinary beggar is frequently an object of suspicion;a well-dressed beggar inevitably so. To be sure, what I begged was employment;but whose business was it to provide me with employment?Not, certainly, that of persons who saw me then for the first time,and who knew nothing about my character.And as to the woman who would not take my handkerchief in exchange for her bread, why,she was right, if the offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable.Let me condense now. I am sick of the subject.
A little before dark I passed a farm-house, at the open door of which the farmer was sitting,eating his supper of bread and cheese. I stopped and said—
“Will you give me a piece of bread?for I am very hungry.” He cast on me a glance of surprise; but without answering,he cut a thick slice from his loaf, and gave it to me. I imagine he did not think I was a beggar,but only an eccentric sort of lady, who had taken a fancy to his brown loaf.As soon as I was out of sight of his house, I sat down and ate it.
I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sought it in the wood I have before alluded to.But my night was wretched, my rest broken: the ground was damp, the air cold: besides,intruders passed near me more than once, and I had again and again to change my quarters:no sense of safety or tranquillity befriended me. Towards morning it rained;the whole of the following day was wet. Do not ask me, reader,to give a minute account of that day; as before, I sought work; as before, I was repulsed;as before, I starved; but once did food pass my lips.At the door of a cottage I saw a little girl about to throw a mess of cold porridge into a pig trough. “Will you give me that?” I asked.
“Will you give me that?” I asked
She stared at me. “Mother!” she exclaimed, “there is a woman wants me to give her these porridge.”
“Well lass,” replied a voice within, “give it her if she’s a beggar. T’ pig doesn’t want it.”
The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it ravenously.
As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridle-path,which I had been pursuing an hour or more.