Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Deluxe Edition Chapter 20.

I had forgotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also
to let down my window blind. The consequence was, that when the
moon, which was full and bright (for the night was fine), came in
her course to that space in the sky opposite my casement, and looked
in at me through the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me.
Awaking in the dead of night, I opened my eyes on her disk
silver white and crystal clear. It was beautiful, but too solemn;
I half rose, and stretched my arm to draw the curtain.

Good god! What a cry! The night its silence its rest, was rent in
twain by a savage, a sharp, a shrilly sound that ran from end to
end of Thornfield Hall. My pulse stopped: my heart stood still; my
stretched arm was paralysed. The cry died, and was not renewed.
Indeed, whatever being uttered that fearful shriek could not soon
repeat it: not the widestwinged condor on the Andes could, twice
in succession, send out such a yell from the cloud shrouding his
eyrie. The thing delivering such utterance must rest ere it could
repeat the effort.

It came out of the third storey; for it passed overhead. And
overhead yes, in the room just above my chamberceiling I now
heard a struggle: a deadly one it seemed from the noise; and a
halfsmothered voice shouted "Help! help! help!" three times rapidly.
"Will no one come?" it cried; and then, while the staggering and
stamping went on wildly, I distinguished through plank and plaster:
"Rochester! Rochester! for god's sake, come!" A chamberdoor opened:
some one ran, or rushed, along the gallery. Another step stamped on
the flooring above and something fell; and there was silence.

I had put on some clothes, though horror shook all my limbs; I issued
from my apartment. The sleepers were all aroused: ejaculations,
terrified murmurs sounded in every room; door after door unclosed;
one looked out and another looked out; the gallery filled. Gentlemen
and ladies alike had quitted their beds; and "Oh! what is it?" "Who is
hurt?" "What has happened?" "Fetch a light!" "Is it fire?" "Are there
robbers?" "Where shall we run?" was demanded confusedly on all
hands. But for the moonlight they would have been in complete
darkness. They ran to and fro; they crowded together: some sobbed,
some stumbled: the confusion was inextricable.

"Where the devil is Rochester?" cried Colonel Dent. "I cannot find
him in his bed." "Here! here!" was shouted in return. "Be composed,
all of you: I'm coming." And the door at the end of the gallery opened,
and Mr. Rochester advanced with a candle: he had just descended
from the upper storey. One of the ladies ran to him directly; she
seized his arm: it was Miss Ingram. "What awful event has taken
place?" said she. "Speak! let us know the worst at once!"

"But don't pull me down or strangle me," he replied: for the Misses
Eshton were clinging about him now; and the two dowagers, in vast
white wrappers, were bearing down on him like ships in full sail.
"All's right! all's right!" he cried. "It's a mere rehearsal of
Much Ado about Nothing. Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous."
And dangerous he looked: his black eyes darted sparks. Calming
himself by an effort, he added.

"A servant has had the nightmare; that is all. 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.
Now, then, I must see you all back into your rooms; for, till the
house is settled, she cannot be looked after. Gentlemen, have the
goodness to set the ladies the example. Miss Ingram, I am sure
you will not fail in evincing superiority to idle terrors. Amy and
Louisa, return to your nests like a pair of doves, as you are.
Mesdames" (to the dowagers), "you will take cold to a dead certainty,
if you stay in this chill gallery any longer."

And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he contrived
to get them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories.
I did not wait to be ordered back to mine, but retreated unnoticed,
as unnoticed I had left it.

Not, however, to go to bed: on the contrary, I began and dressed
myself carefully. 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. I dressed,
then, to be ready for emergencies. When dressed, I sat a long
time by the window looking out over the silent grounds and silvered
fields and waiting for I knew not what. It seemed to me that some
event must follow the strange cry, struggle, and call.

No: stillness returned: each murmur and movement ceased gradually,
and in about an hour Thornfield Hall was again as hushed as a
desert. It seemed that sleep and night had resumed their empire.
Meantime the moon declined: she was about to set. Not liking to
sit in the cold and darkness, I thought I would lie down on my bed,
dressed as I was. 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.

"Am I wanted?" I asked. "Are you up?" asked the voice I expected
to hear, viz., my master's. "Yes, sir." "And dressed?" "Yes." "Come
out, then, quietly." I obeyed. Mr. Rochester stood in the gallery
holding a light. "I want you," he said: "come this way: take your
time, and make no noise." My slippers were thin: I could walk
the matted floor as softly as a cat. 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.

"Have you a sponge in your room?" he asked in a whisper. "Yes,
sir." "Have you any salts volatile salts?" "Yes." "Go back and fetch both."
I returned, sought the sponge on the washstand, the salts in my
drawer, and once more retraced my steps. He still waited; he held
a key in his hand: approaching one of the small, black doors, he
put it in the lock; he paused, and addressed me again.
"You don't turn sick at the sight of blood?" "I think I shall not:
I have never been tried yet." I felt a thrill while I answered him;
but no coldness, and no faintness. "Just give me your hand," he
said: "it will not do to risk a fainting fit."

I put my fingers into his. "Warm and steady," was his remark: he
turned the key and opened the door. I saw a room I remembered
to have seen before, the day Mrs. Fairfax showed me over the house:
it was hung with tapestry; but the tapestry was now looped up
in one part, and there was a door apparent, which had then been
concealed. This door was open; a light shone out of the room
within: I heard thence a snarling, snatching sound, almost like
a dog quarrelling. Mr. Rochester, putting down his candle, said
to me, "Wait a minute," and he went forward to the inner apartment.
A shout of laughter greeted his entrance; noisy at first, and
terminating in Grace Poole's own goblin. Ha! Ha! SHE then was
there. He made some sort of arrangement without speaking,
though I heard a low voice address him: he came out and closed
the door behind him.

"Here, Jane!" he said; and I walked round to the other side of a
large bed, which with its drawn curtains concealed a considerable
portion of the chamber. An easychair was near the bedhead: a
man sat in it, dressed with the exception of his coat; he was still;
his head leant back; his eyes were closed. Mr. Rochester held the
candle over him; I recognised in his pale and seemingly lifeless
face the stranger, Mason: I saw too that his linen on one side,
and one arm, was almost soaked in blood.

"Hold the candle," said Mr. Rochester, and I took it: he fetched
a basin of water from the washstand: "Hold that," said he. I
obeyed. He took the sponge, dipped it in, and moistened the
corpselike face; he asked for my smellingbottle, and applied it
to the nostrils. Mr. Mason shortly unclosed his eyes; he groaned.
Mr. Rochester opened the shirt of the wounded man, whose arm and
shoulder were bandaged: he sponged away blood, trickling fast
down.

"Is there immediate danger?" murmured Mr. Mason.
"Pooh! No a mere scratch. Don't be so overcome, man: bear
up! I'll fetch a surgeon for you now, myself: you'll be able to
be removed by morning, I hope. Jane," he continued. "Sir?"

"I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman, for
an hour, or perhaps two hours: you will sponge the blood as I
do when it returns: if he feels faint, you will put the glass of
water on that stand to his lips, and your salts to his nose. 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."

Again the poor man groaned; he looked as if he dared not move; fear,
either of death or of something else, appeared almost to paralyse
him. Mr. Rochester put the now bloody sponge into my hand, and
I proceeded to use it as he had done. He watched me a second,
then saying, "Remember! No conversation," he left the room. I
experienced a strange feeling as the key grated in the lock, and
the sound of his retreating step ceased to be heard.

Here then I was in the third storey, fastened into one of its mystic
cells; night around me; a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes
and hands; a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door:
yes that was appalling the rest I could bear; but I shuddered
at the thought of Grace Poole bursting out upon me.

I must keep to my post, however. 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. I must
dip my hand again and again in the basin of blood and water, and
wipe away the trickling gore. 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.

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 archtraitor
of Satan himself in his subordinate's form.

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.
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.

Then my own thoughts worried me. 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? 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 carrionseeking
bird of prey?

And this man I bent over this commonplace, quiet stranger
how had he become involved in the web of horror? and why had the
Fury flown at him? What made him seek this quarter of the house
at an untimely season, when he should have been asleep in bed? I
had heard Mr. Rochester assign him an apartment below what
brought him here! And why, now, was he so tame under the violence
or treachery done him? Why did he so quietly submit to the
concealment Mr. Rochester enforced? Why DID Mr. Rochester enforce
this concealment? his guest had been outraged, his own life
on a former occasion had been hideously plotted against; and both
attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion!

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. 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? Why had the mere name of
this unresisting individual whom his word now sufficed to control
like a child fallen on him, a few hours since, as a thunderbolt
might fall on an oak?

Oh! I could not forget his look and his paleness when he whispered:
"Jane, I have got a blow I have got a blow, Jane." I could not
forget how the arm had trembled which he rested on my shoulder:
and it was no light matter which could thus bow the resolute spirit
and thrill the vigorous frame of Fairfax Rochester.

"When will he come? When will he come?" I cried inwardly, as
the night lingered and lingered as my bleeding patient drooped,
moaned, sickened: and neither day nor aid arrived. 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. He moaned so, and
looked so weak, wild, and lost, I feared he was dying; and I might
not even speak to him.

The candle, wasted at last, went out; as it expired, I perceived
streaks of grey light edging the window curtains: dawn was
then approaching. Presently I heard Pilot bark far below, out of
his distant kennel in the courtyard: hope revived. Nor was it
unwarranted: in five minutes more the grating key, the yielding
lock, warned me my watch was relieved. It could not have lasted
more than two hours: many a week has seemed shorter.
Mr. Rochester entered, and with him the surgeon he had been to
fetch. "Now, Carter, be on the alert," he said to this last: "I give you
but half an hour for dressing the wound, fastening the bandages,
getting the patient downstairs and all." "But is he fit to move, sir?"

"No doubt of it; it is nothing serious; he is nervous, his spirits
must be kept up. Come, set to work." Mr. Rochester drew back
the thick curtain, drew up the holland blind, let in all the daylight
he could; and I was surprised and cheered to see how far dawn
was advanced: what rosy streaks were beginning to brighten
the east. Then he approached Mason, whom the surgeon was
already handling. "Now, my good fellow, how are you?" he asked.
"She's done for me, I fear," was the faint reply.
"Not a whit! courage! This day fortnight you'll hardly be a pin
the worse of it: you've lost a little blood; that's all. Carter,
assure him there's no danger."

"I can do that conscientiously," said Carter, who had now undone
the bandages; "only I wish I could have got here sooner: he would
not have bled so much but how is this? The flesh on the shoulder
is torn as well as cut. This wound was not done with a knife:
there have been teeth here!" "She bit me," he murmured. "She
worried me like a tigress, when Rochester got the knife from her."
"You should not have yielded: you should have grappled with her
at once," said Mr. Rochester. "But under such circumstances, what
could one do?" returned Mason. "Oh, it was frightful!" he added,
shuddering. "And I did not expect it: she looked so quiet at first."

"I warned you," was his friend's answer; "I said be on your
guard when you go near her. Besides, you might have waited till
to morrow, and had me with you: it was mere folly to attempt the
interview tonight, and alone." "I thought I could have done some
good." "You thought! you thought! Yes, it makes me impatient
to hear you: but, however, you have suffered, and are likely to
suffer enough for not taking my advice; so I'll say no more. Carter
Hurry! Hurry! The sun will soon rise, and I must have him off."

"Directly, sir; the shoulder is just bandaged. I must look to this
other wound in the arm: she has had her teeth here too, I think."
"She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart," said Mason.
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 wish I could forget it,"
was the answer.

"You will when you are out of the country: when you get back to
Spanish Town, you may think of her as dead and buried or rather,
you need not think of her at all." "Impossible to forget this night!"
"It is not impossible: have some energy, man. You thought you
were as dead as a herring two hours since, and you are all alive
and talking now. There! Carter has done with you or nearly so;
I'll make you decent in a trice. Jane" (he turned to me for the
first time since his reentrance), "take this key: go down into
my bedroom, and walk straight forward into my dressingroom: open
the top drawer of the wardrobe and take out a clean shirt and
neckhandkerchief: bring them here; and be nimble."

I went; sought the repository he had mentioned, found the articles
named, and returned with them. "Now," said he, "go to the other
side of the bed while I order his toilet; but don't leave the room:
you may be wanted again." I retired as directed. "Was anybody
stirring below when you went down, Jane?" inquired Mr.
Rochester presently. "No, sir; all was very still."

"We shall get you off cannily, Dick: and it will be better, both
for your sake, and for that of the poor creature in yonder. I have
striven long to avoid exposure, and I should not like it to come
at last. Here, Carter, help him on with his waistcoat. Where
did you leave your furred cloak? You can't travel a mile without
that, I know, in this damned cold climate. In your room? Jane,
run down to Mr. Mason's room, the one next mine, and fetch
a cloak you will see there."

Again I ran, and again returned, bearing an immense mantle lined
and edged with fur. "Now, I've another errand for you," said my
untiring master; "you must away to my room again. What a mercy
you are shod with velvet, Jane! a clodhopping messenger would
never do at this juncture. You must open the middle drawer of my
toilettable and take out a little phial and a little glass you will find
there, quick!" I flew thither and back, bringing the desired vessels.

"That's well! Now, doctor, I shall take the liberty of administering
a dose myself, on my own responsibility. I got this cordial at
Rome, of an Italian charlatan a fellow you would have kicked,
Carter. It is not a thing to be used indiscriminately, but it is
good upon occasion: as now, for instance. Jane, a little water."
He held out the tiny glass, and I half filled it from the waterbottle
on the washstand. "That will do; now wet the lip of the phial."

I did so; he measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid, and presented
it to Mason. "Drink, Richard: it will give you the heart you lack,
for an hour or so." "But will it hurt me? Is it inflammatory?"
"Drink! drink! drink!" Mr. Mason obeyed, because it was evidently
useless to resist. He was dressed now: he still looked pale, but he
was no longer gory and sullied. Mr. Rochester let him sit three
minutes after he had swallowed the liquid; he then took his arm
"Now I am sure you can get on your feet," he said "try."

The patient rose. "Carter, take him under the other shoulder.
Be of good cheer, Richard; step out that's it!" "I do feel better,"
remarked Mr. Mason. "I am sure you do. Now, Jane, trip on before
us away to the backstairs; unbolt the sidepassage door, and tell
the driver of the postchaise you will see in the yard or just outside,
for I told him not to drive his rattling wheels over the pavement to
be ready; we are coming: and, Jane, if any one is about, come to
the foot of the stairs and hem."

It was by this time halfpast five, and the sun was on the point of
rising; but I found the kitchen still dark and silent. The side
passage door was fastened; I opened it with as little noise as
possible: all the yard was quiet; but the gates stood wide open,
and there was a postchaise, with horses ready harnessed, and driver
seated on the box, stationed outside. I approached him, and said
the gentlemen were coming; he nodded: then I looked carefully round
and listened. The stillness of early morning slumbered everywhere;
the curtains were yet drawn over the servants' chamber windows;
little birds were just twittering in the blossomblanched 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 gentlemen now appeared. Mason, supported by Mr. Rochester and
the surgeon, seemed to walk with tolerable ease: they assisted
him into the chaise; Carter followed. "Take care of him," said
Mr. Rochester to the latter, "and keep him at your house till he is
quite well: I shall ride over in a day or two to see how he gets on.
Richard, how is it with you?" "The fresh air revives me, Fairfax."
"Leave the window open on his side, Carter; there is no wind
good bye, Dick." "Fairfax " "Well what is it?" "Let her be taken care
of; let her be treated as tenderly as may be: let her" he stopped
and burst into tears.

"I do my best; and have done it, and will do it," was the answer:
he shut up the chaise door, and the vehicle drove away.
"Yet would to god there was an end of all this!" added Mr. Rochester,
as he closed and barred the heavy yardgates.
This done, he moved with slow step and abstracted air towards a
door in the wall bordering the orchard. I, supposing he had done
with me, prepared to return to the house; again, however, I heard
him call "Jane!" He had opened feel portal and stood at it, waiting
for me.

"Come where there is some freshness, for a few moments," he said;
"that house is a mere dungeon: don't you feel it so?" "It seems to me
a splendid mansion, sir." "The glamour of inexperience is over your
eyes," he answered; "and you see it through a charmed medium: you
cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies
cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods
mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now HERE" (he pointed to the
leafy enclosure we had entered) "all is real, sweet, and pure."

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 oldfashioned flowers, stocks, sweetwilliams, primroses,
pansies, mingled with southernwood, sweetbriar, and various fragrant
herbs. 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.

"Jane, will you have a flower?" He gathered a half blown rose, the
first on the bush, and offered it to me. "Thank you, sir."
"Do you like this sunrise, Jane? That sky with its high and light
clouds which are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm this
placid and balmly atmosphere?" "I do, very much." "You have
passed a strange night, Jane." "Yes, sir." "And it has made you
look pale were you afraid when I left you alone with Mason?"
"I was afraid of some one coming out of the inner room."
"But I had fastened the door I had the key in my pocket: I should
have been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb my pet lamb
so near a wolf's den, unguarded: you were safe."

"Will Grace Poole live here still, sir?" "Oh yes! Don't trouble
your head about her put the thing out of your thoughts."
"Yet it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays."
"Never fear I will take care of myself." "Is the danger you
apprehended last night gone by now, sir?" "I cannot vouch
for that till Mason is out of England: nor even then. To live,
for me, Jane, is to stand on a cratercrust which may crack
and spue fire any day." "But Mr. Mason seems a man easily led.
Your influence, sir, is evidently potent with him: he will never
set you at defiance or wilfully injure you."

"Oh, no! Mason will not defy me; nor, knowing it, will he hurt
me but, unintentionally, he might in a moment, by one careless
word, deprive me, if not of life, yet for ever of happiness."
"Tell him to be cautious, sir: let him know what you fear, and
show him how to avert the danger." He laughed sardonically,
hastily took my hand, and as hastily threw it from him.

"If I could do that, simpleton, where would the danger be? Annihilated
in a moment. Ever since I have known Mason, I have only had to say
to him 'Do that,' and the thing has been done. But I cannot give
him orders in this case: I cannot say 'Beware of harming me,
Richard;' for it is imperative that I should keep him ignorant that
harm to me is possible. Now you look puzzled; and I will puzzle
you further. You are my little friend, are you not?"
"I like to serve you, sir, and to obey you in all that is right."

"Precisely: I see you do. 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 lightfooted running, no neathanded alacrity, no
lively glance and animated complexion. 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. Well, you too have power over me, and may injure
me: yet I dare not show you where I am vulnerable, lest, faithful
and friendly as you are, you should transfix me at once."

"If you have no more to fear from Mr. Mason than you have from me,
sir, you are very safe." "God grant it may be so! Here, Jane, is an
arbour; sit down." The arbour was an arch in the wall, lined with
ivy; it contained a rustic seat. Mr. Rochester took it, leaving room,
however, for me: but I stood before him. "Sit," he said; "the bench
is long enough for two. You don't hesitate to take a place at my
side, do you? Is that wrong, Jane?" I answered him by assuming
it: to refuse would, I felt, have been unwise.

"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." "No, sir; I am content."

"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. 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. 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. 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. Heartweary and
soulwithered, you come home after years of voluntary
banishment: you make a new acquaintance how or where no
matter: you find in this stranger much of the good and bright
qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never
before encountered; and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil
and without taint. 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. 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?"

He paused for an answer: and what was I to say? Oh, for some
good spirit to suggest a judicious and satisfactory response! Vain
aspiration! 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 treetops; but their song, however sweet, was inarticulate.
Again Mr. Rochester propounded his query:

"Is the wandering and sinful, but now restseeking 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?"

"Sir," I answered, "a wanderer's repose or a sinner's reformation
should never depend on a fellowcreature. Men and women die;
philosophers falter in wisdom, and christians in goodness: if any
one you know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his
equals for strength to amend and solace to heal."

"But the instrument the instrument! god, who does the work,
ordains the instrument. 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.
I almost wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to
catch the suspended revelation; but they would have had to wait many
minutes so long was the silence protracted. At last I looked
up at the tardy speaker: he was looking eagerly at me.

"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?" He got up instantly, went quite to the other
end of the walk, and when he came back he was humming a tune.
"Jane, Jane," said he, stopping before me, "you are quite pale with
your vigils: don't you curse me for disturbing your rest?"
"Curse you? No, sir."

"Shake hands in confirmation of the word. What cold fingers!
They were warmer last night when I touched them at the door of the
mysterious chamber. Jane, when will you watch with me again?"
"Whenever I can be useful, sir." "For instance, the night before I
am married! I am sure I shall not be able to sleep. Will you promise
to sit up with me to bear me company? To you I can talk of my
lovely one: for now you have seen her and know her." "Yes, sir."
"She's a rare one, is she not, Jane?" "Yes, sir."

"A strapper a real strapper, Jane: big, brown, and buxom; with
hair just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had. Bless me!
there's Dent and Lynn in the stables! Go in by the shrubbery,
through that wicket." As I went one way, he went another,
and I heard him in the yard, saying cheerfully "Mason got the
start of you all this morning; he was gone before sunrise: I rose
at four to see him off."

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Deluxe Edition Chapter 21.>