Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
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?”
This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned
traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They
spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. “Oh,
comply!” it said. “Think of his misery; think of his danger—look at his
state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the
recklessness following on despair—soothe him; save him; love him; tell
him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for _you_? or
who will be injured by what you do?”
Still indomitable was the reply—“_I_ care for myself. The more
solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I
will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by
man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and
not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when
there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body
and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they;
inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break
them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always
believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am
insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating
faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone
determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant
my foot.”
I did. Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so. His
fury was wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a moment,
whatever followed; he crossed the floor and seized my arm and grasped
my waist. He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance: physically, I
felt, at the moment, powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and
glow of a furnace: mentally, I still possessed my soul, and with it the
certainty of ultimate safety. The soul, fortunately, has an
interpreter—often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter—in
the eye. My eye rose to his; and while I looked in his fierce face I
gave an involuntary sigh; his gripe was painful, and my over-taxed
strength almost exhausted.
“Never,” said he, as he ground his teeth, “never was anything at once
so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!” (And he
shook me with the force of his hold.) “I could bend her with my finger
and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I
crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing
looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage—with a stern
triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it—the savage,
beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage
will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but
the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor