Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" Chapters 18-24

What crime was this that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the owner?--what mystery, that broke out now in fire and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night?

"Explanation will do for another time," thought I. Still, when I reached my chamber, I felt a pang at the idea she should even temporarily misconstrue what she had seen.

Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehensio

"There! you will find it scarcely more legible than a crumpled, scratched page.

Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana; I beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a convent cell; and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities of person and character.

I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it--to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace--and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam.

It is only because our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes at a peculiarly mournful season, that I consent thus to render it so patient and compliant on my part."

Again I looked at the face; which was no longer turned from me--on the contrary, the bonnet was doffed, the bandage displaced, the head advanced.

She, too, was attired in oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the waist: an embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples; her beautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them upraised in the act of supporting a pitcher, poised gracefully on her head.

Of late I had often recalled this saying and this incident; for during the past week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not brought with it a dream of an infant, which I sometimes hushed in my arms, sometimes dandled on my knee, sometimes watched playing with daisies on a lawn, or again, dabbling its hands in running water.

I asked her once what was the great attraction of that volume, and she said, "the Rubric."

And as the other party withdrew, he and his band took the vacated seats.

Such society revives, regenerates: you feel better days come back--higher wishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence your life, and to spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being.

Whereupon I told her not to mind his badinage; and she, on her part, evinced a fund of genuine French scepticism: denominating Mr. Rochester "un vrai menteur," and assuring him that she made no account whatever of his "contes de fee," and that "du reste, il n'y avait pas de fees, et quand meme il y en avait:" she was sure they would never appear to him, nor ever give him rings, or offer to live with him in the moon.

The kitchen, the butler's pantry, the servants' hall, the entrance hall, were equally alive; and the saloons were only left void and still when the blue sky and halcyon sunshine of the genial spring weather called their occupants out into the grounds.

During the first twelve hours I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments; I saw her disfigured and discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice.

"It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam," said he, "when my friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but I arrive from a very long journey, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate acquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns."

Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad's head, crowned with lotus- flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-s...

In the course of the afternoon and evening these hints were enlarged on: various soft conversations were reported, and sentimental scenes represented; and, in short, a volume of a novel of fashionable life was that day improvised by her for my benefit.

"I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck, and the circlet on your forehead,--which it will become: for nature, at least, has stamped her patent of nobility on this brow, Jane; and I will clasp the bracelets on these fine wrists, and load these fairy-like fingers with rings."

Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adele: pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her; sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with coldness and acrimony.

I saw Mr. Rochester shudder: a singularly marked expression of disgust, horror, hatred, warped his countenance almost to distortion; but he only said--
"Come, be silent, Richard, and never mind her gibberish: don't repeat it."

I could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady--because I read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her--because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible.

I hear a nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile off; no moving form is visible, no coming step audible; but that perfume increases: I must flee.

I knew by her stony eye--opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears--that she was resolved to consider me bad to the last; because to believe me good would give her no generous pleasure: only a sense of mortification.

She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor forbade everything which could painfully excite her.

The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid.

They were fresh now as a succession of April showers and gleams, followed by a lovely spring morning, could make them: the sun was just entering the dappled east, and his light illumined the wreathed and dewy orchard trees and shone down the quiet walks under them.

She then peeped round to where I sat; so stern a neighbour was too restrictive to him, in his present fractious mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor ask of him any information.

On a dark, misty, raw morning in January, I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered heart--a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation--to seek the chilly harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and unexplored.

She's an excitable, nervous person: she construed her dream into an apparition, or something of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright.

I have seen a gipsy vagabond; she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of palmistry and told me what such people usually tell.

"If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to regard me with kindness and forgiveness"
"You have a very bad disposition," said she, "and one to this day I feel it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence, I can never comprehend."

It will expiate at God's tribunal.

The old crone "nichered" a laugh under her bonnet and bandage; she then drew out a short black pipe, and lighting it began to smoke.

Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad's head, crowned with lotus- flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-s...

A most ingenious quibble!

It was a little thing with a veil of gossamer on its head.

A certain superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone, express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by any positive rudeness in word or deed.

"To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts--when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break--at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent--I am ever tender and true."

"I will make the world acknowledge you a beauty, too," he went on, while I really became uneasy at the strain he had adopted, because I felt he was either deluding himself or trying to delude me.

He was dressed now: he still looked pale, but he was no longer gory and sullied.

Much too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's.

I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.'

I got this cordial at Rome, of an Italian charlatan--a fellow you would have kicked, Carter.

She had been all animation with the game, and irritated pride did not lower the expression of her haughty lineaments.

Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions.

It was a wailing child this night, and a laughing one the next: now it nestled close to me, and now it ran from me; but whatever mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven successive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber.

As I laid her down--for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she drank--I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine: the feeble fingers shrank from my touch--the glazing eyes shunned my gaze.

"Once again, seriously; may I enjoy the great good that has been vouchsafed to me, without fearing that any one else is suffering the bitter pain I myself felt a while ago?"

But no--eventide is as pleasant to him as to me, and this antique garden as attractive; and he strolls on, now lifting the gooseberry-tree branches to look at the fruit, large as plums, with which they are laden; now taking a ripe cherry from the wall; now stooping towards a knot of flowers, either to inhale their fragrance or to admire the dew-beads on their petals.

"Little friend," said he, in quite a changed tone--while his face changed too, losing all its softness and gravity, and becoming harsh and sarcastic--"you have noticed my tender penchant for Miss Ingram: don't you think if I married her she would regenerate me with a vengeance?"

Nor was it unwarranted: in five minutes more the grating key, the yielding lock, warned me my watch was relieved.

Still I did not answer, and still I writhed myself from his grasp: for I was still incredulous.

She began muttering,--
"The flame flickers in the eye; the eye shines like dew; it looks soft and full of feeling; it smiles at my jargon: it is susceptible; impression follows impression through its clear sphere; where it ceases to smile, it is sad; an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness.

For a handsome and not an unamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no power in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no firmness in that aquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the low, even forehead; no command in that blank, brown eye.

"Yes?"
"It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly.

Again I looked at the face; which was no longer turned from me--on the contrary, the bonnet was doffed, the bandage displaced, the head advanced.

A curious friendship theirs must have been: a pointed illustration, indeed, of the old adage that "extremes meet."

"A strapper--a real strapper, Jane: big, brown, and buxom; with hair just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had.

"Mason!--the West Indies!" he said, in the tone one might fancy a speaking automaton to enounce its single words; "Mason!--the West Indies!" he reiterated; and he went over the syllables three times, growing, in the intervals of speaking, whiter than ashes: he hardly seemed to know what he was doing.

But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram's efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated failure--herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure--to witness _this_, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.

I was glad to accept her hospitality; and I submitted to be relieved of my travelling garb just as passively as I used to let her undress me when a child.

"I might as well 'gild refined gold.'

Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence.

"You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade," answered Georgiana.

He was dressed now: he still looked pale, but he was no longer gory and sullied.

I wish to foster, not to blight--to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of blood--no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet--That will do.

True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here were two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably savourless for the want of it.

"That you may, my good little girl: there is not another being in the world has the same pure love for me as yourself--for I lay that pleasant unction to my soul, Jane, a belief in your affection."

What creature was it, that, masked in an ordinary woman's face and shape, uttered the voice, now of a mocking demon, and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of prey?

She then peeped round to where I sat; so stern a neighbour was too restrictive to him, in his present fractious mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor ask of him any information.

While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it was no longer plain: there was hope in its aspect and life in its colour; and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple.

The results of what you have done become in time to you utterly insupportable; you take measures to obtain relief: unusual measures, but neither unlawful nor culpable.

She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than usual, that John's conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had been a source of profound affliction to her: but she had now, she said, settled her mind, and formed her resolution.

Neglect it--go on as heretofore, craving, whining, and idling--and suffer the results of your idiocy, however bad and insuperable they may be.

It was strange she never once adverted either to her mother's illness, or her brother's death, or the present gloomy state of the family prospects.

The matrons, meantime, offered vinaigrettes and wielded fans; and again and again reiterated the expression of their concern that their warning had not been taken in time; and the elder gentlemen laughed, and the younger urged their services on the agi

"Appearances would warrant that conclusion: and, no doubt (though, with an audacity that wants chastising out of you, you seem to question it), they will be a superlatively happy pair.

But what is so headstrong as youth?

While such honey-dew fell, such silence reigned, such gloaming gathered, I felt as if I could haunt such shade for ever; but in threading the flower and fruit parterres at the upper part of the enclosure, enticed there by the light the now rising moon cast on this more open quarter, my step is stayed--not by sound, not by sight, but once more by a warning fragrance.

"She says, sir, that she'll have no gentlemen; they need not trouble themselves to come near her; nor," he added, with difficulty suppressing a titter, "any ladies either, except the young, and single."

I went; sought the repository he had mentioned, found the articles named, and returned with them.

I have myself--I tell it you without parable--been a worldly, dissipated, restless man; and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in--"
He paused: the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling.

Mind, I don't say a _crime_; I am not speaking of shedding of blood or any other guilty act, which might make the perpetrator amenable to the law: my word is _error_.

But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram's efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated failure--herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure--to witness _this_, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.

But since Mr. Rochester's visit it seemed spellbound: all the night I heard but three sounds at three long intervals,--a step creak, a momentary renewal of the snarling, canine noise, and a deep human groan.

It was now the sweetest hour of the twenty-four:--"Day its fervid fires had wasted," and dew fell cool on panting plain and scorched summit.

But joy soon effaced every other feeling; and loud as the wind blew, near and deep as the thunder crashed, fierce and frequent as the lightning gleamed, cataract-like as the rain fell during a storm of two hours' duration, I experienced no fear and little awe.

Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence.

The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway, and asserting a right to predominate, to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last: yes,--and to speak.

He made a curious grimace--one of his strange and equivocal demonstrations--threw down his cue and followed me from the room.

I never spoke to it, and it never spoke to me, in words; but I read its eyes, and it read mine; and our speechless colloquy was to this effect--
"It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land, it said; and its errand was to make me happy: I must go with it out of the common world to a lonely place--such as the moon, for instance--and it nodded its head towards her horn, rising over Hay-hill: it told me of the alabaster cave and silver vale where we might live.

I cannot remember detecting gratitude in his face."

"To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts--when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break--at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent--I am ever tender and true."

"My principles were never trained, Jane: they may have grown a little awry for want of attention."

She made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face changed; she seemed to experience some inward sensation--the precursor, perhaps, of the last pang.

I knew Mr. Rochester; though the begrimed face, the disordered dress (his coat hanging loose from one arm, as if it had been almost torn from his back in a scuffle), the desperate and scowling countenance, the rough, bristling hair might well have disguised him.

I pass over the sort of slur conveyed in this suggestion on the character of my beloved; indeed, when you are far away, Janet, I'll try to forget it: I shall notice only its wisdom; which is such that I have made it my law of action.

She giggled, and her colour rose.

"But will it hurt me?--is it inflammatory?"

My friend would then turn to me, quiet and pale, and would say, 'No, sir; that is impossible: I cannot do it, because it is wrong;' and would become immutable as a fixed star.

A considerable interval elapsed before it again rose.

When I looked up, on leaving his arms, there stood the widow, pale, grave, and amazed.

Miss Ingram, I am sure you will not fail in evincing superiority to idle terrors.

"No, indeed, Mrs. Fairfax!" exclaimed I, nettled; "he is nothing like my father!

"Well then, sir, have the goodness to gratify my curiosity, which is much piqued on one point."

Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension.

The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid.

It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.

I wish, Jane, I were a trifle better adapted to match with her externally.

The flame illuminated her hand stretched out: roused now, and on the alert for discoveries, I at once noticed that hand.

I knew by her stony eye--opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears--that she was resolved to consider me bad to the last; because to believe me good would give her no generous pleasure: only a sense of mortification.

I neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to dissuade her from it.

I saw Mr. Rochester shudder: a singularly marked expression of disgust, horror, hatred, warped his countenance almost to distortion; but he only said--
"Come, be silent, Richard, and never mind her gibberish: don't repeat it."

All eyes met her with a glance of eager curiosity, and she met all eyes with one of rebuff and coldness; she looked neither flurried nor merry: she walked stiffly to her seat, and took it in silence.

But unimpressionable natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural antipathies so readily eradicated.

When tea was over and Mrs. Fairfax had taken her knitting, and I had assumed a low seat near her, and Adele, kneeling on the carpet, had nestled close up to me, and a sense of mutual affection seemed to surround us with a ring of golden peace, I uttered a silent prayer that we might not be parted far or soon; but when, as we thus sat, Mr. Rochester entered, unannounced, and looking at us, seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle of a group so amicable--when he said he supposed the old...

Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension.

Here is a talisman will remove all difficulties;' and she held out a pretty gold ring.

I drew them large; I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and sombre; the irids lustrous and large.

I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr. Rochester in the shadowy orchard; but I could not find a reason to allege for leaving him.

Annihilated in a moment.

It is only because our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes at a peculiarly mournful season, that I consent thus to render it so patient and compliant on my part."

Here the gentlemen interposed with earnest petitions to be further enlightened on these two last-named points; but they got only blushes, ejaculations, tremors, and titters, in return for their importunity.

But I liked his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as being at the same time unsettled and inanimate.

The hue of her dress was black too; but its fashion was so different from her sister's--so much more flowing and becoming--it looked as stylish as the other's looked puritanical.

Here the gentlemen interposed with earnest petitions to be further enlightened on these two last-named points; but they got only blushes, ejaculations, tremors, and titters, in return for their importunity.

Mrs. Fairfax was summoned to give information respecting the resources of the house in shawls, dresses, draperies of any kind; and certain wardrobes of the third storey were ransacked, and their contents, in the shape of brocaded and hooped petticoats, satin sacques, black modes, lace lappets, &c., were brought down in armfuls by the abigails; then a selection was made, and such things as were chosen were carried to the boudoir within the drawing-room.

"Puny and insignificant, you mean.

He is beset by sharpers: John is sunk and degraded--his look is frightful--I feel ashamed for him when I see him."

Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart--have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his sardonic face; or, better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won.

I have not been petrified.

I suppose I do come on; though in what fashion I know not; being scarcely cognisant of my movements, and solicitous only to appear calm; and, above all, to control the working muscles of my face--which I feel rebel insolently against my will, and struggle to express what I had resolved to conceal.

It was very clean and neat: the ornamental windows were hung with little white curtains; the floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were burnished bright, and the fire burnt clear.

When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie Leaven say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little child; and that to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to one's self or one's kin.

From the bosom of his robe he then produced a casket, opened it and showed magnificent bracelets and earrings; she acted astonishment and admiration; kneeling, he laid the treasure at her feet; incredulity and delight were expressed by her looks and gestures; the stranger fastened the bracelets on her arms and the rings in her ears.

I could not forget my own sensations when you thus started up and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear as if an animal that I had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes and cursed me in a man's voice.--Bring

"You should not have yielded: you should have grappled with her at once," said Mr. Rochester.

That feature too is propitious.

The west wind whispered in the ivy round me; but no gentle Ariel borrowed its breath as a medium of speech: the birds sang in the tree-tops; but their song, however sweet, was inarticulate.

I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries--to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity.

Again Mr. Rochester propounded his query:
"Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant, man justified in daring the world's opinion, in order to attach to him for ever this gentle, gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his own peace of mind and regeneration of life?"

"You see now, my queenly Blanche," began Lady Ingram, "she encroaches.

What crime was this that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the owner?--what mystery, that broke out now in fire and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night?

I would as soon see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked out in stage-trappings, as myself clad in a court-lady's robe; and I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you.

"I don't understand enigmas.

The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid.

It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment.

I knew Mr. Rochester; though the begrimed face, the disordered dress (his coat hanging loose from one arm, as if it had been almost torn from his back in a scuffle), the desperate and scowling countenance, the rough, bristling hair might well have disguised him.

He glided up the gallery and up the stairs, and stopped in the dark, low corridor of the fateful third storey: I had followed and stood at his side.

You--you strange, you almost unearthly thing!--I

She was fast relapsing into stupor; nor did her mind again rally: at twelve o'clock that night she died.

And again and again I answered, "Yes." After which he murmured, "It will atone--it will atone.

At first I could not make much sense of what I heard; for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary Ingram, who sat nearer to me, confused the fragmentary sentences that reached me at intervals.

Again Mr. Rochester propounded his query:
"Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant, man justified in daring the world's opinion, in order to attach to him for ever this gentle, gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his own peace of mind and regeneration of life?"

A ceremony followed, in dumb show, in which it was easy to recognise the pantomime of a marriage.

His manner was polite; his accent, in speaking, struck me as being somewhat unusual,--not precisely foreign, but still not altogether English: his age might be about Mr. Rochester's,--between thirty and forty; his complexion was singularly sallow: otherwise he was a fine-looking man, at first sight especially.

She began muttering,--
"The flame flickers in the eye; the eye shines like dew; it looks soft and full of feeling; it smiles at my jargon: it is susceptible; impression follows impression through its clear sphere; where it ceases to smile, it is sad; an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness.

But I liked his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as being at the same time unsettled and inanimate.

I did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days.

A beggar-woman and her little boy--pale, ragged objects both--were coming up the walk, and I ran down and gave them all the money I happened to have in my purse--some three or four shillings: good or bad, they must partake of my jubilee.

CHAPTER XXI
Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key.

"Now, my little friend, while the sun drinks the dew--while all the flowers in this old garden awake and expand, and the birds fetch their young ones' breakfast out of the Thornfield, and the early bees do their first spell of work--I'll put a case to you, which you must endeavour to suppose your own: but first, look at me, and tell me you are at ease, and not fearing that I err in detaining you, or that you err in staying."

Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the new-comer entered.

The stillness of early morning slumbered everywhere; the curtains were yet drawn over the servants' chamber windows; little birds were just twittering in the blossom-blanched orchard trees, whose boughs drooped like white garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard; the carriage horses stamped from time to time in their closed stables: all else was still.

Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity--this guardedness of his--this perfect, clear consciousness of his fair one's defects--this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, that my ever- torturing pain arose.

"Jane, be still; don't struggle so, like a wild frantic bird that is rending its own plumage in its desperation."

The drawing- room, as I have before observed, was raised two steps above the dining- room, and on the top of the upper step, placed a yard or two back within the room, appeared a large marble basin--which I recognised as an ornament of the conservatory--where it usually stood, surrounded by exotics, and tenanted by gold fish--and whence it must have been transported with some trouble, on account of its size and weight.

Tea ready, I was going to approach the table; but she desired me to sit still, quite in her old peremptory tones.

His dark eyes and swarthy skin and Paynim features suited the costume exactly: he looked the very model of an Eastern emir, an agent or a victim of the bowstring.

It was no more the withered limb of eld than my own; it was a rounded supple member, with smooth fingers, symmetrically turned; a broad ring flashed on the little finger, and stooping forward, I looked at it, and saw a gem I had seen a hundred times before.

I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it--to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace--and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam.

His last words were balm: they seemed to imply that it imported something to him whether I forgot him or not.

Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me of this.

I found the sick-room unwatched, as I had expected: no nurse was there; the patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic; her livid face sunk in the pillows: the fire was dying in the grate.

Georgiana added to her "How d'ye do?" several commonplaces about my journey, the weather, and so on, uttered in rather a drawling tone: and accompanied by sundry side-glances that measured me from head to foot--now traversing the folds of my drab merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage bonnet.

Within the arch, the bulky figure of Sir George Lynn, whom Mr. Rochester had likewise chosen, was seen enveloped in a white sheet: before him, on a table, lay open a large book; and at his side stood Amy Eshton, draped in Mr. Rochester's cloak, and holding a book in her hand.

"You would be strangely incredulous if you did doubt it," was my mental comment.

Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adele: pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her; sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with coldness and acrimony.

The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party.

Georgiana took out her handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour afterwards; Eliza sat cold, impassable, and assiduously industrious.

And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he contrived to get them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories.

Really your organs of wonder and credulity are easily excited: you seem, by the importance of you all--my good mama included--ascribe to this matter, absolutely to believe we have a genuine witch in the house, who is in close alliance with the old gentleman.

"My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not vindictive.

The sounds I had heard after the scream, and the words that had been uttered, had probably been heard only by me; for they had proceeded from the room above mine: but they assured me that it was not a servant's dream which had thus struck horror through the house; and that the explanation Mr. Rochester had given was merely an invention framed to pacify his guests.

And as for the vague something--was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression?--that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing he...

I had heard from Mrs. Fairfax in the interim of my absence: the party at the hall was dispersed; Mr. Rochester had left for London three weeks ago, but he was then expected to return in a fortnight.

Her occupation, suspended by Mr. Rochester's announcement, seemed now forgotten: her eyes, fixed on the blank wall opposite, expressed the surprise of a quiet mind stirred by unwonted tidings.

The day will close almost before you are aware it has begun; and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant moment: you have had to seek no one's company, conversation, sympathy, forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an independent being ought to do.

But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram's efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated failure--herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure--to witness _this_, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.

"If all these people came in a body and spat at me, what would you do, Jane?"

"Not a whit!--courage!

What does that inexplicable, that uncanny turn of countenance mean?"

"Have you any salts--volatile salts?"

They ran to and fro; they crowded together: some sobbed, some stumbled: the confusion was inextricable.

The west, too, was warm: no watery gleam chilled it--it seemed as if there was a fire lit, an altar burning behind its screen of marbled vapour, and out of apertures shone a golden redness.

To attain this end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom--a mere conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies nor your judgment approves?"

The want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly felt one day that he had been summoned to Millcote on business, and was not likely to return till late.

I remember her appearance at the moment--it was very graceful and very striking: she wore a morning robe of sky-blue crape; a gauzy azure scarf was twisted in her hair.

And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.

There was stretched Sarah Reed's once robust and active frame, rigid and still: her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid; her brow and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul.

I would as soon have been charged with a pauper brat out of a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally weak.

A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power over me it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi- sarcastic attentions of the other--Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana ruffle me.

I shall devote myself for a time to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas, and to a careful study of the workings of their system: if I find it to be, as I half suspect it is, the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently and in order, I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take the veil."

"God pardon me!" he subjoined ere long; "and man meddle not with me: I have her, and will hold her."

I have myself--I tell it you without parable--been a worldly, dissipated, restless man; and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in--"
He paused: the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling.

It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion.

Jane" (he turned to me for the first time since his re-entrance), "take this key: go down into my bedroom, and walk straight forward into my dressing-room: open the top drawer of the wardrobe and take out a clean shirt and neck-handkerchief: bring them here; and be nimble."

To so practised and indefatigable a horseman as Mr. Rochester, it would be but a morning's ride.

In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother--and only one; the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent's Cairngorm eye: the blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and chin--perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable hardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous and buxom.

The thought of Mrs. O'Gall and Bitternutt Lodge struck cold to my heart; and colder the thought of all the brine and foam, destined, as it seemed, to rush between me and the master at whose side I now walked, and coldest the remembrance of the wider ocean--wealth, caste, custom intervened between me and what I naturally and inevitably loved.

Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he was gone to make arrangements for his wedding, as he had talked of purchasing a new carriage: she said the idea of his marrying Miss Ingram still seemed strange to her; but from what everybody said, and from what she had herself seen, she could no longer doubt that the event would shortly take place.

The candle, wasted at last, went out; as it expired, I perceived streaks of grey light edging the window curtains: dawn was then approaching.

"Why, you see, Miss Eyre, it is not a common mishap: his life has been very wild: these last three years he gave himself up to strange ways, and his death was shocking."

I had, again and again, held the water to Mason's white lips; again and again offered him the stimulating salts: my efforts seemed ineffectual: either bodily or mental suffering, or loss of blood, or all three combined, were fast prostrating his strength.

Really your organs of wonder and credulity are easily excited: you seem, by the importance of you all--my good mama included--ascribe to this matter, absolutely to believe we have a genuine witch in the house, who is in close alliance with the old gentleman.

I used to look at my master's face to see if it were sad or fierce; but I could not remember the time when it had been so uniformly clear of clouds or evil feelings.

"For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now,--a very little while; and then you will turn cool; and then you will be capricious; and then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado to please you: but when you get well used to me, you will perhaps like me again,--_like_ me, I say, not _love_ me.

The personage on the well-brink now seemed to accost her; to make some request:--"She hasted, let down her pitcher on her hand, and gave him to drink."

A comparative silence ensued.

In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother--and only one; the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent's Cairngorm eye: the blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and chin--perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable hardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous and buxom.

I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it--to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace--and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam.

I see genuine contentment in your gait and mien, your eye and face, when you are helping me and pleasing me--working for me, and with me, in, as you characteristically say, '_all that is right_:' for if I bid you do what you thought wrong, there would be no light-footed running, no neat-handed alacrity, no lively glance and animated complexion.

I wish to remind you that it was you who first said to me, with that discretion I respect in you--with that foresight, prudence, and humility which befit your responsible and dependent position--that in case I married Miss Ingram, both you and little Adele had better trot forthwith.

I see genuine contentment in your gait and mien, your eye and face, when you are helping me and pleasing me--working for me, and with me, in, as you characteristically say, '_all that is right_:' for if I bid you do what you thought wrong, there would be no light-footed running, no neat-handed alacrity, no lively glance and animated complexion.

"No; some unaccountable one.

A negotiation was opened through the medium of the ambassador, Sam; and after much pacing to and fro, till, I think, the said Sam's calves must have ached with the exercise, permission was at last, with great difficulty, extorted from the rigorous Sibyl, for the three to wait upon her in a body.

Still you are miserable; for hope has quitted you on the very confines of life: your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which you feel will not leave it till the time of setting.

Bitter and base associations have become the sole food of your memory: you wander here and there, seeking rest in exile: happiness in pleasure--I mean in heartless, sensual pleasure--such as dulls intellect and blights feeling.

"Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I'll carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater."

I must watch this ghastly countenance--these blue, still lips forbidden to unclose--these eyes now shut, now opening, now wandering through the room, now fixing on me, and ever glazed with the dulness of horror.

The dowagers Ingram and Lynn sought solace in a quiet game at cards.

Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity--this guardedness of his--this perfect, clear consciousness of his fair one's defects--this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, that my ever- torturing pain arose.

I have seen a gipsy vagabond; she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of palmistry and told me what such people usually tell.

An extinguished candle stood on the table; she was bending over the fire, and seemed reading in a little black book, like a prayer-book, by the light of the blaze: she muttered the words to herself, as most old women do, while she read; she did not desist immediately on my entrance: it appeared she wished to finish a paragraph.

"It's like your impudence to say so: I expected it of you; I heard it in your step as you crossed the threshold."

"And if they laid you under a ban for adhering to me?"

I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium.

But joy soon effaced every other feeling; and loud as the wind blew, near and deep as the thunder crashed, fierce and frequent as the lightning gleamed, cataract-like as the rain fell during a storm of two hours' duration, I experienced no fear and little awe.

Is there not love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves?

A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away--away--to an indefinite distance--it died.

A shout of laughter greeted his entrance; noisy at first, and terminating in Grace Poole's own goblin ha! ha!

Mobile and flexible, it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection for its interlocutor.

You could not now traverse the gallery, once so hushed, nor enter the front chambers, once so tenantless, without encountering a smart lady's-maid or a dandy valet.

What crime was this that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the owner?--what mystery, that broke out now in fire and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night?

"Eagerness of a listener!" repeated she: "yes; Mr. Rochester has sat by the hour, his ear inclined to the fascinating lips that took such delight in their task of communicating; and Mr. Rochester was so willing to receive and looked so grateful for the pastime given him; you have noticed this?"

I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it--to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace--and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam.

Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.

I sought Mr. Mason, delivered the message, and preceded him from the room: I ushered him into the library, and then I went upstairs.

I should wish now to protract this moment _ad infinitum_; but I dare not.

Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me of this.

This I felt sure was Eliza, though I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that elongated and colourless visage.

Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed, and sank into a dozing state.

Awaking in the dead of night, I opened my eyes on her disk--silver-white and crystal clear.

Amidst this sordid scene, sat a man with his clenched hands resting on his knees, and his eyes bent on the ground.

I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me--because I might pass hours in his presence, and he would never once turn his eyes in my direction--because I saw all his attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object too ...

This was a full-blown, very plump damsel, fair as waxwork, with handsome and regular features, languishing blue eyes, and ringleted yellow hair.

To live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spue fire any day."

She stirred the fire, so that a ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal: the glare, however, as she sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow: mine, it illumined.

On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was disclosed; the rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some sort of dark and coarse drapery.

"Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy:--suppose you were no longer a girl well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from childhood upwards; imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive that you there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from what motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence.

The Ladies Lynn and Ingram continued to consort in solemn conferences, where they nodded their two turbans at each other, and held up their four hands in confronting gestures of surprise, or mystery, or horror, according to the theme on which their gossip ran, like a pair of magnified puppets.

"And," she added, "I am obliged to you for your valuable services and discreet conduct!

I turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa: the others, too, looked up from their several occupations; for at the same time a crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible on the wet gravel.

I wish to foster, not to blight--to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of blood--no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet--That will do.

What charade Colonel Dent and his party played, what word they chose, how they acquitted themselves, I no longer remember; but I still see the consultation which followed each scene: I see Mr. Rochester turn to Miss Ingram, and Miss Ingram to him; I see her incline her head towards him, till the jetty curls almost touch his shoulder and wave against his cheek; I hear their mutual whisperings; I recall their interchanged glances; and something even of the feeling roused by the spectacl...

And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he contrived to get them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories.

"Indeed, mama, but you can--and will," pronounced the haughty voice of Blanche, as she turned round on the piano-stool; where till now she had sat silent, apparently examining sundry sheets of music.

"And what a sweet-tempered forehead he has!" cried Louisa,--"so smooth--none of those frowning irregularities I dislike so much; and such a placid eye and smile!"

And as for the vague something--was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression?--that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing he...

I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries--to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity.

Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me--for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate."

I had, again and again, held the water to Mason's white lips; again and again offered him the stimulating salts: my efforts seemed ineffectual: either bodily or mental suffering, or loss of blood, or all three combined, were fast prostrating his strength.

She, too, was attired in oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the waist: an embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples; her beautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them upraised in the act of supporting a pitcher, poised gracefully on her head.

The post-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell, and a gentleman alighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not Mr. Rochester; it was a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.

She's an excitable, nervous person: she construed her dream into an apparition, or something of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright.

I knew gipsies and fortune-tellers did not express themselves as this seeming old woman had expressed herself; besides I had noted her feigned voice, her anxiety to conceal her features.

He went to Millcote this morning, and will be back here to-night or to-morrow: does that circumstance exclude him from the list of your acquaintance--blot him, as it were, out of existence?"

Her mind seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety, and aspirations after dissipations to come.

"Don't keep me long; the fire scorches me."

Presently I heard Pilot bark far below, out of his distant kennel in the courtyard: hope revived.

I felt now as composed as ever I did in my life: there was nothing indeed in the gipsy's appearance to trouble one's calm.

I was now able to concentrate my attention on the group by the fire, and I presently gathered that the new-comer was called Mr. Mason; then I learned that he was but just arrived in England, and that he came from some hot country: which was the reason, doubtless, his face was so sallow, and that he sat so near the hearth, and wore a surtout in the house.

Eliza's greeting was delivered in a short, abrupt voice, without a smile; and then she sat down again, fixed her eyes on the fire, and seemed to forget me.

If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers--jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired her--acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper would have been my admiration--the more truly tranquil my quiescence.

He strayed down a walk edged with box, with apple trees, pear trees, and cherry trees on one side, and a border on the other full of all sorts of old-fashioned flowers, stocks, sweet-williams, primroses, pansies, mingled with southernwood, sweet-briar, and various fragrant herbs.

Your influence, sir, is evidently potent with him: he will never set you at defiance or wilfully injure you."

He is beset by sharpers: John is sunk and degraded--his look is frightful--I feel ashamed for him when I see him."

The afternoon was wet: a walk the party had proposed to take to see a gipsy camp, lately pitched on a common beyond Hay, was consequently deferred.

"I wonder what thoughts are busy in your heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern: just as little sympathetic communion passing between you and them as if they were really mere shadows of human forms, and not the actual substance."

As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments so near the window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the breaking of my spine: in her eagerness she did not observe me at first, but when she did, she curled her lip and moved to another casement.

But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram's efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated failure--herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure--to witness _this_, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.

Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence.

Why did he so quietly submit to the concealment Mr. Rochester enforced?

According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered here or glanced there, it was now the bearded physician, Luke, that bent his brow; now St. John's long hair that waved; and anon the devilish face of Judas, that grew out of the panel, and seemed gathering life and threatening a revelation of the arch-traitor--of Satan himself--in his subordinate's form.

Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare--to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature.

"Your fortune is yet doubtful: when I examined your face, one trait contradicted another.

Robert here entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the cradle and went to welcome him: afterwards she insisted on my taking off my bonnet and having some tea; for she said I looked pale and tired.

You will not speak to him on any pretext--and--Richard, it will be at the peril of your life if you speak to her: open your lips--agitate yourself--and I'll not answer for the consequences."

She made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face changed; she seemed to experience some inward sensation--the precursor, perhaps, of the last pang.

I must be served at the fireside, she said; and she placed before me a little round stand with my cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to accommodate me with some privately purloined dainty on a nursery chair: and I smiled and obeyed her as in bygone days.

Her own fortune she had taken care to secure; and when her mother died--and it was wholly improbable, she tranquilly remarked, that she should either recover or linger long--she would execute a long-cherished project: seek a retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured from disturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous world.

Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me of this.

Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence.

On closer examination, you detected something in his face that displeased, or rather that failed to please.

Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence.

I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high.

"Tell him to be cautious, sir: let him know what you fear, and show him how to avert the danger."

Chance laid them somewhat apart; let them be once approached and bliss results."

I asked myself; "I want to commence my packing."

The feeling, the announcement sent through me, was something stronger than was consistent with joy--something that smote and stunned.

Two hours she devoted to her diary; two to working by herself in the kitchen-garden; and one to the regulation of her accounts.

Your influence, sir, is evidently potent with him: he will never set you at defiance or wilfully injure you."

I turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa: the others, too, looked up from their several occupations; for at the same time a crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible on the wet gravel.

The materials are all prepared; there only wants a movement to combine them.

The stillness of early morning slumbered everywhere; the curtains were yet drawn over the servants' chamber windows; little birds were just twittering in the blossom-blanched orchard trees, whose boughs drooped like white garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard; the carriage horses stamped from time to time in their closed stables: all else was still.

The marble basin was removed; in its place, stood a deal table and a kitchen chair: these objects were visible by a very dim light proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles being all extinguished.

I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it--to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace--and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam.

It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active energy of the other: whence then had arisen Mr. Rochester's dismay when he heard of Mr. Mason's arrival?

His features were regular, but too relaxed: his eye was large and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a tame, vacant life--at least so I thought.

A sufficient interval having elapsed for the performers to resume their ordinary costume, they re-entered the dining-room.

She began muttering,--
"The flame flickers in the eye; the eye shines like dew; it looks soft and full of feeling; it smiles at my jargon: it is susceptible; impression follows impression through its clear sphere; where it ceases to smile, it is sad; an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness.

His features were regular, but too relaxed: his eye was large and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a tame, vacant life--at least so I thought.

I looked at it; I smiled at the speaking likeness: I was absorbed and content.

"I think I may confess," he continued, "even although I should make you a little indignant, Jane--and I have seen what a fire-spirit you can be when you are indignant.

I experienced a strange feeling as the key grated in the lock, and the sound of his retreating step ceased to be heard.

I was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat unexpected one, broke the thread of my musings.

Much too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's.

I left the window, and moved with little noise across the carpet; as I stooped to take off my shoes, a cautious hand tapped low at the door.

The fact was, I had other things to think about; within the last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than any they could raise--pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite had been excited than any it was in their power to inflict or bestow--that their airs gave me no concern either for good or bad.

If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers--jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired her--acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper would have been my admiration--the more truly tranquil my quiescence.

A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power over me it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi- sarcastic attentions of the other--Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana ruffle me.

"As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart experiences.

Every one seemed in high glee; laughter and conversation were general and animated.

It was a wailing child this night, and a laughing one the next: now it nestled close to me, and now it ran from me; but whatever mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven successive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber.

All their class held these principles: I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom.

"But I cannot persuade her to go away, my lady," said the footman; "nor can any of the servants: Mrs. Fairfax is with her just now, entreating her to be gone; but she has taken a chair in the chimney-corner, and says nothing shall stir her from it till she gets leave to come in here."

Even when that weather was broken, and continuous rain set in for some days, no damp seemed cast over enjoyment: indoor amusements only became more lively and varied, in consequence of the stop put to outdoor gaiety.

The stillness of early morning slumbered everywhere; the curtains were yet drawn over the servants' chamber windows; little birds were just twittering in the blossom-blanched orchard trees, whose boughs drooped like white garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard; the carriage horses stamped from time to time in their closed stables: all else was still.

"Now, I've another errand for you," said my untiring master; "you must away to my room again.

Take one day; share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes--include all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity.

"Eagerness of a listener!" repeated she: "yes; Mr. Rochester has sat by the hour, his ear inclined to the fascinating lips that took such delight in their task of communicating; and Mr. Rochester was so willing to receive and looked so grateful for the pastime given him; you have noticed this?"

Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adele: pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her; sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with coldness and acrimony.

The flame illuminated her hand stretched out: roused now, and on the alert for discoveries, I at once noticed that hand.

It was no more the withered limb of eld than my own; it was a rounded supple member, with smooth fingers, symmetrically turned; a broad ring flashed on the little finger, and stooping forward, I looked at it, and saw a gem I had seen a hundred times before.

Here the gentlemen interposed with earnest petitions to be further enlightened on these two last-named points; but they got only blushes, ejaculations, tremors, and titters, in return for their importunity.

It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husband's own happiness offered by this plan convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act.

I found all the party in the dining-room at supper, as Mr. Rochester had said; they were not seated at table,--the supper was arranged on the sideboard; each had taken what he chose, and they stood about here and there in groups, their plates and glasses in their hands.

I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure.

The hue of her dress was black too; but its fashion was so different from her sister's--so much more flowing and becoming--it looked as stylish as the other's looked puritanical.

One of the gentlemen, Mr. Eshton, observing me, seemed to propose that I should be asked to join them; but Lady Ingram instantly negatived the notion.

They affirmed that she had even divined their thoughts, and had whispered in the ear of each the name of the person she liked best in the world, and informed them of what they most wished for.

But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram's efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated failure--herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure--to witness _this_, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.

I did so; he measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid, and presented it to Mason.

"Yes, Miss: my wife is very hearty, thank you; she brought me another little one about two months since--we have three now--and both mother and child are thriving."

My whim is gratified; and now I think Mr. Eshton will do well to put the hag in the stocks to-morrow morning, as he threatened."

One unexpected sentence came from her lips after another, till I got involved in a web of mystification; and wondered what unseen spirit had been sitting for weeks by my heart watching its workings and taking record of every pulse.

"I will make the world acknowledge you a beauty, too," he went on, while I really became uneasy at the strain he had adopted, because I felt he was either deluding himself or trying to delude me.

In the midst of the tumult, and while my eyes and ears were fully engaged in the scene before me, I heard a hem close at my elbow: I turned, and saw Sam.
"If you please, miss, the gipsy declares that there is another young single lady in the room who has not been to her yet, and she swears she will not go till she has seen all.

It had heretofore been my habit always to shrink from arrogance: received as I had been to-day, I should, a year ago, have resolved to quit Gateshead the very next morning; now, it was disclosed to me all at once that that would be a foolish plan.

I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on my employment; the shadows darken on the wrought, antique tapestry round me, and grow black under the hangings of the vast old bed, and quiver strangely over the doors of a great cabinet opposite--whose front, divided into twelve panels, bore, in grim design, the heads of the twelve apostles, each enclosed in its separate panel as in a frame; while above them at the top rose an ebon crucifix and a dying Christ.

Nor was it unwarranted: in five minutes more the grating key, the yielding lock, warned me my watch was relieved.

I gazed on it with gloom and pain: nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or hopeful, or subduing did it inspire; only a grating anguish for _her_ woes--not _my_ loss--and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a form.

I shall take up my abode in a religious house near Lisle--a nunnery you would call it; there I shall be quiet and unmolested.

"It is enough, sir: as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many."

Amidst all this, I had to listen as well as watch: to listen for the movements of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den.

"Don't be alarmed," continued the strange being; "she's a safe hand is Mrs. Poole: close and quiet; any one may repose confidence in her.