Books: Jane Eyre

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All the house was still; for I believe all, except St. John and
myself, were now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out:
the room was full of moonlight. My heart beat fast and thick: I
heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible
feeling that thrilled it through, and passed at once to my head
and extremities. The feeling was not like an electric shock, but
it was quite as sharp, as strange, as startling: it acted on my
senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had been but torpor,
from which they were now summoned and forced to wake. They rose
expectant: eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my bones.

"What have you heard? What do you see?" asked St. John. I
saw nothing, but I heard a voice somewhere cry -

"Jane! Jane! Jane!" -- nothing more.

"O God! what is it?" I gasped.

I might have said, "Where is it?" for it did not seem in the room
-- nor in the house -- nor in the garden; it did not come out of
the air -- nor from under the earth -- nor from overhead. I had
heard it -- where, or whence, for ever impossible to know! And it
was the voice of a human being -- a known, loved, well-remembered
voice -- that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain
and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.

"I am coming!" I cried. "Wait for me! Oh, I will come!" I flew
to the door and looked into the passage: it was dark. I ran out
into the garden: it was void.

"Where are you?" I exclaimed.

The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back -- "Where
are you?" I listened. The wind sighed low in the firs: all was
moorland loneliness and midnight hush.

"Down superstition!" I commented, as that spectre rose up black
by the black yew at the gate. "This is not thy deception, nor thy
witchcraft: it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did --
no miracle -- but her best."

I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained
me. It was MY time to assume ascendency. MY powers were in play
and in force. I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired
him to leave me: I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once.
Where there is energy to command well enough, obedience never fails.
I mounted to my chamber; locked myself in; fell on my knees; and
prayed in my way -- a different way to St. John's, but effective in
its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit;
and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet. I rose from the
thanksgiving -- took a resolve -- and lay down, unscared, enlightened
-- eager but for the daylight.

CHAPTER XXXVI

The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or
two with arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe,
in the order wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief
absence. Meantime, I heard St. John quit his room. He stopped
at my door: I feared he would knock -- no, but a slip of paper
was passed under the door. I took it up. It bore these words -

"You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little
longer, you would have laid your hand on the Christian's cross and
the angel's crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I return
this day fortnight. Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not
into temptation: the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh,
I see, is weak. I shall pray for you hourly. -- Yours, ST. JOHN."

"My spirit," I answered mentally, "is willing to do what is right;
and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will
of Heaven, when once that will is distinctly known to me. At any
rate, it shall be strong enough to search -- inquire -- to grope an
outlet from this cloud of doubt, and find the open day of certainty."

It was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and chilly:
rain beat fast on my casement. I heard the front-door open, and
St. John pass out. Looking through the window, I saw him traverse
the garden. He took the way over the misty moors in the direction
of Whitcross -- there he would meet the coach.

"In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin,"
thought I: "I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross. I too have
some to see and ask after in England, before I depart for ever."

It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time. I filled the interval
in walking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which
had given my plans their present bent. I recalled that inward
sensation I had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its
unspeakable strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again
I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in
ME -- not in the external world. I asked was it a mere nervous
impression -- a delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was
more like an inspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had come
like the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas's
prison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed
its bands -- it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang
trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my
startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which
neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success
of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the
cumbrous body.

"Ere many days," I said, as I terminated my musings, "I will know
something of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Letters
have proved of no avail -- personal inquiry shall replace them."

At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a
journey, and should be absent at least four days.

"Alone, Jane?" they asked.

"Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for
some time been uneasy."

They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they
had believed me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed,
I had often said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they
abstained from comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure
I was well enough to travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I
replied, that nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped
soon to alleviate.

It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled with
no inquiries -- no surmises. Having once explained to them that
I could not now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely
acquiesced in the silence with which I pursued them, according to
me the privilege of free action I should under similar circumstances
have accorded them.

I left Moor House at three o'clock p.m., and soon after four I
stood at the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival
of the coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst
the silence of those solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it
approach from a great distance. It was the same vehicle whence,
a year ago, I had alighted one summer evening on this very spot
-- how desolate, and hopeless, and objectless! It stopped as
I beckoned. I entered -- not now obliged to part with my whole
fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more on the road
to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.

It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from
Whitcross on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding
Thursday morning the coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside
inn, situated in the midst of scenery whose green hedges and large
fields and low pastoral hills (how mild of feature and verdant of
hue compared with the stern North-Midland moors of Morton!) met my
eye like the lineaments of a once familiar face. Yes, I knew the
character of this landscape: I was sure we were near my bourne.

"How far is Thornfield Hall from here?" I asked of the ostler.

"Just two miles, ma'am, across the fields."

"My journey is closed," I thought to myself. I got out of the
coach, gave a box I had into the ostler's charge, to be kept till
I called for it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was
going: the brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I
read in gilt letters, "The Rochester Arms." My heart leapt up: I
was already on my master's very lands. It fell again: the thought
struck it:-

"Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught
you know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which
you hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you
have nothing to do with him: you dare not speak to him or seek
his presence. You have lost your labour -- you had better go no
farther," urged the monitor. "Ask information of the people at the
inn; they can give you all you seek: they can solve your doubts at
once. Go up to that man, and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home."

The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to
act on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair.
To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see
the Hall under the ray of her star. There was the stile before
me -- the very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf,
distracted with a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me, on
the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I well knew what course
I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of them. How fast I
walked! How I ran sometimes! How I looked forward to catch the
first view of the well-known woods! With what feelings I welcomed
single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill
between them!

At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing
broke the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on I
hastened. Another field crossed -- a lane threaded -- and there
were the courtyard walls -- the back offices: the house itself,
the rookery still hid. "My first view of it shall be in front," I
determined, "where its bold battlements will strike the eye nobly at
once, and where I can single out my master's very window: perhaps
he will be standing at it -- he rises early: perhaps he is now
walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in front. Could I but
see him! -- but a moment! Surely, in that case, I should not be
so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell -- I am not certain. And
if I did -- what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be
hurt by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me? I
rave: perhaps at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the
Pyrenees, or on the tideless sea of the south."

I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard -- turned
its angle: there was a gate just there, opening into the meadow,
between two stone pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one
pillar I could peep round quietly at the full front of the mansion.
I advanced my head with precaution, desirous to ascertain if any
bedroom window-blinds were yet drawn up: battlements, windows,
long front -- all from this sheltered station were at my command.

The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this
survey. I wonder what they thought. They must have considered
I was very careful and timid at first, and that gradually I grew
very bold and reckless. A peep, and then a long stare; and then
a departure from my niche and a straying out into the meadow; and
a sudden stop full in front of the great mansion, and a protracted,
hardy gaze towards it. "What affectation of diffidence was this
at first?" they might have demanded; "what stupid regardlessness
now?"

Hear an illustration, reader.

A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to
catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals
softly over the grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses --
fancying she has stirred: he withdraws: not for worlds would he
be seen. All is still: he again advances: he bends above her;
a light veil rests on her features: he lifts it, bends lower; now
his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty -- warm, and blooming,
and lovely, in rest. How hurried was their first glance! But how
they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and vehemently clasps
in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch with
his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and
gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because
he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter -- by any
movement he can make. He thought his love slept sweetly: he finds
she is stone dead.

I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a
blackened ruin.

No need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed! -- to peep up at
chamber lattices, fearing life was astir behind them! No need to
listen for doors opening -- to fancy steps on the pavement or the
gravel-walk! The lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: the
portal yawned void. The front was, as I had once seen it in a
dream, but a well-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking,
perforated with paneless windows: no roof, no battlements, no
chimneys -- all had crashed in.

And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of
a lonesome wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here
had never received an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault
in a church aisle. The grim blackness of the stones told by what
fate the Hall had fallen -- by conflagration: but how kindled?
What story belonged to this disaster? What loss, besides mortar and
marble and wood-work had followed upon it? Had life been wrecked
as well as property? If so, whose? Dreadful question: there was
no one here to answer it -- not even dumb sign, mute token.

In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated
interior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late
occurrence. Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that
void arch, winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements; for,
amidst the drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation:
grass and weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen
rafters. And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of this
wreck? In what land? Under what auspices? My eye involuntarily
wandered to the grey church tower near the gates, and I asked,
"Is he with Damer de Rochester, sharing the shelter of his narrow
marble house?"

Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere
but at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himself
brought my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the
door and sit down: I had some questions to ask him. But when he
complied, I scarcely knew how to begin; such horror had I of the
possible answers. And yet the spectacle of desolation I had just
left prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery. The host was
a respectable-looking, middle-aged man.

"You know Thornfield Hall, of course?" I managed to say at last.

"Yes, ma'am; I lived there once."

"Did you?" Not in my time, I thought: you are a stranger to me.

"I was the late Mr. Rochester's butler," he added.

The late! I seem to have received, with full force, the blow I
had been trying to evade.

"The late!" I gasped. "Is he dead?"

"I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward's father," he explained.
I breathed again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully assured by
these words that Mr. Edward -- MY Mr. Rochester (God bless him,
wherever he was!) -- was at least alive: was, in short, "the present
gentleman." Gladdening words! It seemed I could hear all that was
to come -- whatever the disclosures might be -- with comparative
tranquillity. Since he was not in the grave, I could bear, I
thought, to learn that he was at the Antipodes.

"Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?" I asked, knowing,
of course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring
the direct question as to where he really was.

"No, ma'am -- oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are
a stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened
last autumn, -- Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down
just about harvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense
quantity of valuable property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture
could be saved. The fire broke out at dead of night, and before
the engines arrived from Millcote, the building was one mass of
flame. It was a terrible spectacle: I witnessed it myself."

"At dead of night!" I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour
of fatality at Thornfield. "Was it known how it originated?" I
demanded.

"They guessed, ma'am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was
ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware," he continued,
edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking low, "that
there was a lady -- a -- a lunatic, kept in the house?"

"I have heard something of it."

"She was kept in very close confinement, ma'am: people even for
some years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one
saw her: they only knew by rumour that such a person was at the
Hall; and who or what she was it was difficult to conjecture. They
said Mr. Edward had brought her from abroad, and some believed she
had been his mistress. But a queer thing happened a year since --
a very queer thing."

I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to
the main fact.

"And this lady?"

"This lady, ma'am," he answered, "turned out to be Mr. Rochester's
wife! The discovery was brought about in the strangest way. There
was a young lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in -- "

"But the fire," I suggested.

"I'm coming to that, ma'am -- that Mr. Edward fell in love with.
The servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was:
he was after her continually. They used to watch him -- servants
will, you know, ma'am -- and he set store on her past everything:
for all, nobody but him thought her so very handsome. She was
a little small thing, they say, almost like a child. I never saw
her myself; but I've heard Leah, the house-maid, tell of her. Leah
liked her well enough. Mr. Rochester was about forty, and this
governess not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen of his age fall
in love with girls, they are often like as if they were bewitched.
Well, he would marry her."

"You shall tell me this part of the story another time," I said;
"but now I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about
the fire. Was it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had
any hand in it?"

"You've hit it, ma'am: it's quite certain that it was her, and
nobody but her, that set it going. She had a woman to take care
of her called Mrs. Poole -- an able woman in her line, and very
trustworthy, but for one fault -- a fault common to a deal of them
nurses and matrons -- she KEPT A PRIVATE BOTTLE OF GIN BY HER,
and now and then took a drop over-much. It is excusable, for she
had a hard life of it: but still it was dangerous; for when Mrs.
Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water, the mad lady, who
was as cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of her pocket,
let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the house,
doing any wild mischief that came into her head. They say she had
nearly burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don't know about
that. However, on this night, she set fire first to the hangings
of the room next her own, and then she got down to a lower storey,
and made her way to the chamber that had been the governess's --
(she was like as if she knew somehow how matters had gone on, and
had a spite at her) -- and she kindled the bed there; but there
was nobody sleeping in it, fortunately. The governess had run away
two months before; and for all Mr. Rochester sought her as if she
had been the most precious thing he had in the world, he never
could hear a word of her; and he grew savage -- quite savage on
his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but he got dangerous
after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent Mrs. Fairfax,
the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did it
handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and she
deserved it -- she was a very good woman. Miss Adele, a ward he
had, was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the
gentry, and shut himself up like a hermit at the Hall."

"What! did he not leave England?"

"Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stones
of the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost
about the grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses
-- which it is my opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener
gentleman than he was before that midge of a governess crossed him,
you never saw, ma'am. He was not a man given to wine, or cards,
or racing, as some are, and he was not so very handsome; but he
had a courage and a will of his own, if ever man had. I knew him
from a boy, you see: and for my part, I have often wished that
Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she came to Thornfield
Hall."

"Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?"

"Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was
burning above and below, and got the servants out of their beds
and helped them down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out
of her cell. And then they called out to him that she was on the
roof, where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements,
and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off: I saw her
and heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had long
black hair: we could see it streaming against the flames as she
stood. I witnessed, and several more witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend
through the sky-light on to the roof; we heard him call 'Bertha!'
We saw him approach her; and then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a
spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement."

"Dead?"

"Dead! Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were
scattered."

"Good God!"

"You may well say so, ma'am: it was frightful!"

He shuddered.

"And afterwards?" I urged.

"Well, ma'am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: there
are only some bits of walls standing now."

"Were any other lives lost?"

"No -- perhaps it would have been better if there had."

"What do you mean?"

"Poor Mr. Edward!" he ejaculated, "I little thought ever to have
seen it! Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his
first marriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while he
had one living: but I pity him, for my part."

"You said he was alive?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better he dead."

"Why? How?" My blood was again running cold. "Where is he?" I
demanded. "Is he in England?"

"Ay -- ay -- he's in England; he can't get out of England, I fancy
-- he's a fixture now."

What agony was this! And the man seemed resolved to protract it.

"He is stone-blind," he said at last. "Yes, he is stone-blind, is
Mr. Edward."

I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strength
to ask what had caused this calamity.

"It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness,
in a way, ma'am: he wouldn't leave the house till every one else
was out before him. As he came down the great staircase at last,
after Mrs. Rochester had flung herself from the battlements, there
was a great crash -- all fell. He was taken out from under the
ruins, alive, but sadly hurt: a beam had fallen in such a way as
to protect him partly; but one eye was knocked out, and one hand so
crushed that Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it directly.
The other eye inflamed: he lost the sight of that also. He is
now helpless, indeed -- blind and a cripple."

"Where is he? Where does he now live?"

"At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles
off: quite a desolate spot."

"Who is with him?"

"Old John and his wife: he would have none else. He is quite
broken down, they say."

"Have you any sort of conveyance?"

"We have a chaise, ma'am, a very handsome chaise."

"Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me
to Ferndean before dark this day, I'll pay both you and him twice
the hire you usually demand."

CHAPTER XXXVII

The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity,
moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in
a wood. I had heard of it before. Mr. Rochester often spoke of
it, and sometimes went there. His father had purchased the estate
for the sake of the game covers. He would have let the house, but
could find no tenant, in consequence of its ineligible and insalubrious
site. Ferndean then remained uninhabited and unfurnished, with the
exception of some two or three rooms fitted up for the accommodation
of the squire when he went there in the season to shoot.

To this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the
characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small penetrating
rain. The last mile I performed on foot, having dismissed the
chaise and driver with the double remuneration I had promised. Even
when within a very short distance of the manor-house, you could
see nothing of it, so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy
wood about it. Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where
to enter, and passing through them, I found myself at once in the
twilight of close-ranked trees. There was a grass-grown track
descending the forest aisle between hoar and knotty shafts and
under branched arches. I followed it, expecting soon to reach the
dwelling; but it stretched on and on, it would far and farther:
no sign of habitation or grounds was visible.