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 fragrant 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.”