“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 meant to shoot myself. I only entertained the intention for a moment; for, not being insane,the crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair,which had originated the wish and design of self-destruction, was 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 undeceived.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 _woman_kind (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.
“Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you to my presence.An unusual—to me—a perfectly new character I suspected was yours:I desired to search it deeper and know it better.You entered the room with a look and air at once shy and independent:you were quaintly dressed—much as you are now. I made you talk:ere long I found you full of strange contrasts. Your garb and manner were restricted by rule;your air was often diffident, and altogether that of one refined by nature,but absolutely unused to society, and a good deal afraid of making herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or blunder;yet when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing eye to your interlocutor’s face:there was penetration and power in each glance you gave; when plied by close questions,you found ready and round answers. Very soon you seemed to get used to me:I believe you felt the existence of sympathy between you and your grim and cross master, Jane;for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquillised your manner:snarl as I would, you showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure at my moroseness;you watched me, and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet sagacious grace I cannot describe.I was at once content and stimulated with what I saw: I liked what I had seen,and wished to see more. Yet, for a long time, I treated you distantly,and sought your company rarely. I was an intellectual epicure,and wished to prolong the gratification of making this novel and piquant acquaintance: besides,I was for a while troubled with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade—the sweet charm of freshness would leave it.I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one,cut in an indestructible gem. Moreover,I wished to see whether you would seek me if I shunned you—but you did not;you kept in the schoolroom as still as your own desk and easel; if by chance I met you,you passed me as soon, and with as little token of recognition, as was consistent with respect.Your habitual expression in those days, Jane, was a thoughtful look; not despondent,for you were not sickly; but not buoyant, for you had little hope, and no actual pleasure.I wondered what you thought of me, or if you ever thought of me, and resolved to find this out.
“I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in your glance, and genial in your manner,when you conversed: I saw you had a social heart;it was the silent schoolroom—it was the tedium of your life—that made you mournful.I permitted myself the delight of being kind to you; kindness stirred emotion soon:your face became soft in expression, your tones gentle;I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful happy accent.I used to enjoy a chance meeting with you, Jane, at this time:there was a curious hesitation in your manner:you glanced at me with a slight trouble—a hovering doubt:you did not know what my caprice might be—whether I was going to play the master and be stern,or the friend and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often to simulate the first whim; and,when I stretched my hand out cordially, such bloom and light and bliss rose to your young,wistful features, I had much ado often to avoid straining you then and there to my heart.”
“Don’t talk any more of those days, sir,” I interrupted,furtively dashing away some tears from my eyes; his language was torture to me;for I knew what I must do—and do soon—and all these reminiscences,and these revelations of his feelings only made my work more difficult.
“No, Jane,” he returned: “what necessity is there to dwell on the Past,when the Present is so much surer—the Future so much brighter?”
I shuddered to hear the infatuated assertion.
“You see now how the case stands—do you not?” he continued. “After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude,I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found _you_.You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment.I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart;it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and,kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.
“It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry you.To tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery: you know now that I had but a hideous demon.I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your character.I feared early instilled prejudice: I wanted to have you safe before hazarding confidences.This was cowardly: I should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first,as I do now—opened to you plainly my life of agony—described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier existence—shown to you,not my _resolution_ (that word is weak), but my resistless _bent_ to love faithfully and well,where I am faithfully and well loved in return.Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity and to give me yours. Jane—give it me now.”
A pause.
“Why are you silent, Jane?”
I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning!Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved;and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce love and idol.One drear word comprised my intolerable duty—“Depart!”
“Jane, you understand what I want of you?Just this promise—‘I will be yours, Mr. Rochester.’”
“Mr. Rochester, I will _not_ be yours.”
Another long silence.
“Jane!” recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down with grief,and turned me stone-cold with ominous terror—for this still voice was the pant of a lion rising—“Jane,do you mean to go one way in the world, and to let me go another?”
“I do.”
“Jane” (bending towards and embracing me), “do you mean it now?”
“I do.”
“And now?” softly kissing my forehead and cheek.
“I do,” extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely.
“Oh, Jane, this is bitter!This—this is wicked. It would not be wicked to love me.”
“It would to obey you.”
A wild look raised his brows—crossed his features: he rose; but he forebore yet.I laid my hand on the back of a chair for support: I shook, I feared—but I resolved.
“One instant, Jane. Give one glance to my horrible life when you are gone.All happiness will be torn away with you. What then is left?For a wife I have but the maniac upstairs:as well might you refer me to some corpse in yonder churchyard. What shall I do, Jane?Where turn for a companion and for some hope?”
“Do as I do: trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet again there.”
“Then you will not yield?”
“No.”
“Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed?” His voice rose.
“I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil.”
“Then you snatch love and innocence from me?You fling me back on lust for a passion—vice for an occupation?”
“Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for myself.We were born to strive and endure—you as well as I: do so. You will forget me before I forget you.”
“You make me a liar by such language: you sully my honour. I declared I could not change:you tell me to my face I shall change soon. And what a distortion in your judgment,what a perversity in your ideas, is proved by your conduct!Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach?for you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me?”