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.
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CHAPTER XXXVI
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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 self 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
shell-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
woodwork 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
