Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
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?”