Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Deluxe Edition Chapter 27.

Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round
and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the
wall, I asked, "What am I to do?" But the answer my mind gave,
"Leave Thornfield at once" was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped
my ears. I said I could not bear such words now. "That I am not
Edward Rochester's bride is the least part of my woe," I alleged:
"that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found
them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master;
but that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely,
is intolerable. I cannot do it."

But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold
that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted
to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering
I saw laid out for me; and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion
by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her
dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he
would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.
"Let me be torn away," then I cried. "Let another help me!"
"No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall
yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand:
your heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it."

I rose up suddenly, terror struck at the solitude which so ruthless
a judge haunted, at the silence which so awful a voice filled.
My head swam as I stood erect. I perceived that I was sickening
from excitement and inanition; neither meat nor drink had passed my
lips that day, for I had taken no breakfast. And, with a strange
pang, I now reflected that, long as I had been shut up here, no
message had been sent to ask how I was, or to invite me to come
down: not even little Adele had tapped at the door; not even Mrs.
Fairfax had sought me. "Friends always forget those whom fortune
forsakes," I murmured, as I undrew the bolt and passed out. I
stumbled over an obstacle: my head was still dizzy, my sight was
dim, and my limbs were feeble. I could not soon recover myself.
I fell, but not on to the ground: an outstretched arm caught me.
I looked up I was supported by Mr. Rochester, who sat in a chair
across my chamber threshold.

"You come out at last," he said. "Well, I have been waiting for
you long, and listening: yet not one movement have I heard, nor
one sob: five minutes more of that death like hush, and I should
have forced the lock like a burglar. So you shun me? you shut
yourself up and grieve alone! I would rather you had come and
upbraided me with vehemence. You are passionate. I expected a
scene of some kind. I was prepared for the hot rain of tears; only
I wanted them to be shed on my breast: now a senseless floor has
received them, or your drenched handkerchief. But I err: you have
not wept at all! I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but no trace
of tears. I suppose, then, your heart has been weeping blood?"
"Well, Jane! not a word of reproach? Nothing bitter nothing
poignant? Nothing to cut a feeling or sting a passion? You sit
quietly where I have placed you, and regard me with a weary, passive
look."

"Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but
one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of
his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some
mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his
bloody blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive
me?" Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot. There was
such deep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such
manly energy in his manner; and besides, there was such unchanged
love in his whole look and mien I forgave him all: yet not in
words, not outwardly; only at my heart's core. "You know I am
a scoundrel, Jane?" ere long he inquired wistfully wondering,
I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness, the result rather
of weakness than of will. "Yes, sir." "Then tell me so roundly and
sharply don't spare me."

"I cannot: I am tired and sick. I want some water." He heaved
a sort of shuddering sigh, and taking me in his arms, carried me
downstairs. At first I did not know to what room he had borne me;
all was cloudy to my glazed sight: presently I felt the reviving
warmth of a fire; for, summer as it was, I had become icy cold in
my chamber. He put wine to my lips; I tasted it and revived; then
I ate something he offered me, and was soon myself. I was in the
library sitting in his chair he was quite near. "If I could go out
of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be well for me,"
I thought; "then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my
heart strings in rending them from among Mr. Rochester's. I must
leave him, it appears. I do not want to leave him I cannot leave him."
"How are you now, Jane?" "Much better, sir; I shall be well soon."
"Taste the wine again, Jane."

I obeyed him; then he put the glass on the table, stood before me,
and looked at me attentively. Suddenly he turned away, with an
inarticulate exclamation, full of passionate emotion of some kind;
he walked fast through the room and came back; he stooped towards
me as if to kiss me; but I remembered caresses were now forbidden.
I turned my face away and put his aside. "What! How is this?" he
exclaimed hastily. "Oh, I know! you won't kiss the husband of Bertha
Mason? You consider my arms filled and my embraces appropriated?"
"At any rate, there is neither room nor claim for me, sir."
"Why, Jane? I will spare you the trouble of much talking; I will
answer for you. Because I have a wife already, you would reply.
I guess rightly?" "Yes."

"If you think so, you must have a strange opinion of me; you must
regard me as a plotting profligate a base and low rake who
has been simulating disinterested love in order to draw you into
a snare deliberately laid, and strip you of honour and rob you of
self respect. What do you say to that? I see you can say nothing
in the first place, you are faint still, and have enough to do
to draw your breath; in the second place, you cannot yet accustom
yourself to accuse and revile me, and besides, the flood gates of
tears are opened, and they would rush out if you spoke much; and
you have no desire to expostulate, to upbraid, to make a scene:
you are thinking how TO ACT TALKING you consider is of no use.
I know you I am on my guard." "Sir, I do not wish to act against you,"
I said; and my unsteady voice warned me to curtail my sentence.

"Not in your sense of the word, but in mine you are scheming to
destroy me. You have as good as said that I am a married man
as a married man you will shun me, keep out of my way: just now
you have refused to kiss me. You intend to make yourself a complete
stranger to me: to live under this roof only as Adele's governess;
if ever I say a friendly word to you, if ever a friendly feeling
inclines you again to me, you will say, 'That man had nearly
made me his mistress: I must be ice and rock to him;' and ice and
rock you will accordingly become." I cleared and steadied my
voice to reply: "All is changed about me, sir; I must change too
there is no doubt of that; and to avoid fluctuations of feeling,
and continual combats with recollections and associations,
there is only one way Adele must have a new governess, sir."

"Oh, Adele will go to school I have settled that already; nor do
I mean to torment you with the hideous associations and recollections
of Thornfield Hall this accursed place this tent of Achan
this insolent vault, offering the ghastliness of living death to
the light of the open sky this narrow stone hell, with its one
real fiend, worse than a legion of such as we imagine. Jane, you
shall not stay here, nor will I. I was wrong ever to bring you to
Thornfield Hall, knowing as I did how it was haunted. I charged
them to conceal from you, before I ever saw you, all knowledge of
the curse of the place; merely because I feared Adele never would
have a governess to stay if she knew with what inmate she was housed,
and my plans would not permit me to remove the maniac elsewhere
though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more retired
and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough,
had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the
heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement.
Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge:
but to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to
indirect assassination, even of what I most hate.

"Concealing the mad woman's neighbourhood from you, however, was
something like covering a child with a cloak and laying it down
near a upas tree: that demon's vicinage is poisoned, and always
was. But I'll shut up Thornfield Hall: I'll nail up the front
door and board the lower windows: I'll give Mrs. Poole two hundred
a year to live here with MY WIFE, as you term that fearful hag:
Grace will do much for money, and she shall have her son, the keeper
at Grimsby Retreat, to bear her company and be at hand to give her
aid in the paroxysms, when MY WIFE is prompted by her familiar to
burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh
from their bones, and so on " "Sir," I interrupted him, "you are
inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her with hate
with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel she cannot help being mad."

"Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you
don't know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it
is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you
think I should hate you?" "I do indeed, sir."

"Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing
about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your
flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would
still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it
would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine
you, and not a strait waistcoat your grasp, even in fury, would
have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman
did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as
fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with
disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have
no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with
untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and
never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer
a ray of recognition for me. But why do I follow that train of
ideas? I was talking of removing you from Thornfield. All, you
know, is prepared for prompt departure: to morrow you shall go. I
only ask you to endure one more night under this roof, Jane; and
then, farewell to its miseries and terrors for ever! I have a
place to repair to, which will be a secure sanctuary from hateful
reminiscences, from unwelcome intrusion even from falsehood and
slander."

"And take Adele with you, sir," I interrupted; "she will be a
companion for you." "What do you mean, Jane? I told you I would
send Adele to school; and what do I want with a child for a
companion, and not my own child, a French dancer's bastard?
Why do you importune me about her! I say, why do you assign
Adele to me for a companion?" "You spoke of a retirement, sir;
and retirement and solitude are dull: too dull for you."
"Solitude! solitude!" he reiterated with irritation. "I see I must
come to an explanation. I don't know what sphynx like expression
is forming in your countenance. You are to share my solitude. Do
you understand?"

I shook my head: it required a degree of courage, excited as he
was becoming, even to risk that mute sign of dissent. He had been
walking fast about the room, and he stopped, as if suddenly rooted
to one spot. He looked at me long and hard: I turned my eyes
from him, fixed them on the fire, and tried to assume and maintain
a quiet, collected aspect. "Now for the hitch in Jane's character,"
he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had
expected him to speak. "The reel of silk has run smoothly enough
so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle:
here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble!
By god! I long to exert a fraction of Samson's strength, and break
the entanglement like tow!" He recommenced his walk, but soon
again stopped, and this time just before me.

"Jane! Will you hear reason?" (he stooped and approached his
lips to my ear); "because, if you won't, I'll try violence." his
voice was hoarse; his look that of a man who is just about to
burst an insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild license.
I saw that in another moment, and with one impetus of frenzy more,
I should be able to do nothing with him. The present the passing
second of time was all I had in which to control and restrain
him a movement of repulsion, flight, fear would have sealed my
doom, and his. But I was not afraid: not in the least. I felt
an inward power; a sense of influence, which supported me. The
crisis was perilous; but not without its charm: such as the Indian,
perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I took
hold of his clenched hand, loosened the contorted fingers,
and said to him, soothingly

"Sit down; I'll talk to you as long as you like, and hear all you
have to say, whether reasonable or unreasonable."
He sat down: but he did not get leave to speak directly. I had
been struggling with tears for some time: I had taken great pains
to repress them, because I knew he would not like to see me weep.
Now, however, I considered it well to let them flow as freely
and as long as they liked. If the flood annoyed him, so much the
better. So I gave way and cried heartily. Soon I heard him
earnestly entreating me to be composed. I said I could not
while he was in such a passion. "But I am not angry, Jane:
I only love you too well; and you had steeled your little pale
face with such a resolute, frozen look, I could not endure it.
Hush, now, and wipe your eyes." His softened voice announced
that he was subdued; so I, in my turn, became calm. Now he made
an effort to rest his head on my shoulder, but I would not permit it.
Then he would draw me to him: No.

"Jane! Jane!" he said, in such an accent of bitter sadness it thrilled
along every nerve I had; "you don't love me, then? It was only
my station, and the rank of my wife, that you valued? Now that you
think me disqualified to become your husband, you recoil from my
touch as if I were some toad or ape." These words cut me: yet what
could I do or I say? I ought probably to have done or said nothing;
but I was so tortured by a sense of remorse at thus hurting his feelings,
I could not control the wish to drop balm where I had wounded.
"I DO love you," I said, "more than ever: but I must not show or
indulge the feeling: and this is the last time I must express it."
"The last time, Jane! What! do you think you can live with me,
and see me daily, and yet, if you still love me, be always cold
and distant?" "No, sir; that I am certain I could not; and therefore
I see there is but one way: but you will be furious if I mention it."
"Oh, mention it! If I storm, you have the art of weeping." "Mr.
Rochester, I must leave you." "For how long, Jane? For a few
minutes, while you smooth your hair which is somewhat
dishevelled; and bathe your face which looks feverish?"

"I must leave Adele and Thornfield. I must part with you for my
whole life: I must begin a new existence among strange faces and
strange scenes." "Of course: I told you you should. I pass over the
madness about parting from me. You mean you must become a
part of me. As to the new existence, it is all right: you shall yet
be my wife: I am not married. You shall be Mrs. Rochester both
virtually and nominally. I shall keep only to you so long as you
and I live. You shall go to a place I have in the south of France:
a whitewashed villa on the shores of the Mediterranean. There
you shall live a happy, and guarded, and most innocent life.
Never fear that I wish to lure you into error to make you my
mistress. Why did you shake your head? Jane, you must be
reasonable, or in truth I shall again become frantic."

His voice and hand quivered: his large nostrils dilated; his eye
blazed: still I dared to speak. "Sir, your wife is living: that is
a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself. If I lived with
you as you desire, I should then be your mistress: to say
otherwise is sophistical is false." "Jane, I am not a gentle
tempered man you forget that: I am not long enduring; I
am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me and yourself,
put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and beware!"
He bared his wrist, and offered it to me: the blood was forsaking
his cheek and lips, they were growing livid; I was distressed on all
hands. To agitate him thus deeply, by a resistance he so abhorred,
was cruel: to yield was out of the question. I did what human
beings do instinctively when they are driven to utter extremity
looked for aid to one higher than man: the words "god help me!"
burst involuntarily from my lips.

"I am a fool!" cried Mr. Rochester suddenly. "I keep telling
her I am not married, and do not explain to her why. I forget she
knows nothing of the character of that woman, or of the circumstances
attending my infernal union with her. Oh, I am certain Jane will
agree with me in opinion, when she knows all that I know! Just put
your hand in mine, Janet that I may have the evidence of touch
as well as sight, to prove you are near me and I will in a few
words show you the real state of the case. Can you listen to me?"
"Yes, sir; for hours if you will." "I ask only minutes. Jane, did you
ever hear or know that I was not the eldest son of my house: that
I had once a brother older than I?"

"I remember Mrs. Fairfax told me so once." "And did you ever hear
that my father was an avaricious, grasping man?" "I have
understood something to that effect." "Well, Jane, being so,
it was his resolution to keep the property together; he could
not bear the idea of dividing his estate and leaving me a fair
portion: all, he resolved, should go to my brother, Rowland.
Yet as little could he endure that a son of his should be a poor
man. I must be provided for by a wealthy marriage.

He sought me a partner betimes. Mr. Mason, a West India planter and
merchant, was his old acquaintance. He was certain his possessions
were real and vast: he made inquiries. Mr. Mason, he found, had a
son and daughter; and he learned from him that he could and would
give the latter a fortune of thirty thousand pounds: that sufficed.
When I left college, I was sent out to Jamaica, to espouse a bride
already courted for me. My father said nothing about her money;
but he told me Miss Mason was the boast of Spanish Town for her
beauty: and this was no lie. I found her a fine woman, in the
style of Blanche Ingram: tall, dark, and majestic. Her family
wished to secure me because I was of a good race; and so did she.
They showed her to me in parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom
saw her alone, and had very little private conversation with her.
She flattered me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms
and accomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to admire her
and envy me. I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited;
and being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her.

There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of
society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will
not hurry a man to its commission. Her relatives encouraged me;
competitors piqued me; she allured me: a marriage was achieved
almost before I knew where I was. Oh, I have no respect for myself
when I think of that act! An agony of inward contempt masters
me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her. I
was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her nature: I had
marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement
in her mind or manners and, I married her: gross, grovelling,
mole eyed blockhead that I was! With less sin I might have. But
let me remember to whom I am speaking."

"My bride's mother I had never seen: I understood she was dead.
The honeymoon over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and
shut up in a lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother, too!
A complete dumb idiot. The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom
I cannot hate, whilst I abhor all his kindred, because he has some
grains of affection in his feeble mind, shown in the continued
interest he takes in his wretched sister, and also in a dog like
attachment he once bore me), will probably be in the same state
one day. My father and my brother Rowland knew all this; but they
thought only of the thirty thousand pounds, and joined in the plot
against me."

"These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery
of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to
my wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her
tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and
singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded
to anything larger when I found that I could not pass a single
evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort;
that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because
whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at
once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile when I perceived
that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because
no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and
unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory,
exacting orders even then I restrained myself: I eschewed
upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my repentance
and disgust in secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt.

"Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details: some strong
words shall express what I have to say. I lived with that woman
upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed:
her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her
vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty
could check them, and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy
intellect she had, and what giant propensities! How fearful were
the curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the
true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the
hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a
wife at once intemperate and unchaste.

"My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four
years my father died too. I was rich enough now yet poor to
hideous indigence: a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever
saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society
a part of me. And I could not rid myself of it by any legal
proceedings: for the doctors now discovered that MY WIFE was mad
her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity.
Jane, you don't like my narrative; you look almost sick shall
I defer the rest to another day?" "No, sir, finish it now; I pity you
I do earnestly pity you."

"Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of
tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of
those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous,
selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of
woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured
them. But that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of
which your whole face is full at this moment with which your eyes
are now almost overflowing with which your heart is heaving
with which your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling,
is the suffering mother of love: its anguish is the very natal
pang of the divine passion. I accept it, Jane; let the daughter
have free advent my arms wait to receive her."
"Now, sir, proceed; what did you do when you found she was mad?"

"Jane, I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self respect
was all that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes
of the world, I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour; but I
resolved to be clean in my own sight and to the last I repudiated
the contamination of her crimes, and wrenched myself from connection
with her mental defects. Still, society associated my name and
person with hers; I yet saw her and heard her daily: something
of her breath (faugh!) mixed with the air I breathed; and besides,
I remembered I had once been her husband that recollection was
then, and is now, inexpressibly odious to me; moreover, I knew that
while she lived I could never be the husband of another and better
wife; and, though five years my senior (her family and her father
had lied to me even in the particular of her age), she was likely
to live as long as I, being as robust in frame as she was infirm
in mind. Thus, at the age of twenty six, I was hopeless.

"One night I had been awakened by her yells (since the medical
men had pronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up)
it was a fiery West Indian night; one of the description that
frequently precede the hurricanes of those climates. Being unable
to sleep in bed, I got up and opened the window. The air was like
sulphur steams I could find no refreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes
came buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room; the sea, which
I could hear from thence, rumbled dull like an earthquake black
clouds were casting up over it; the moon was setting in the waves,
broad and red, like a hot cannon ball she threw her last bloody
glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest. I was
physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and my ears were
filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein she
momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon hate, with
such language! no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary
than she: though two rooms off, I heard every word the thin
partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction
to her wolfish cries.

"'This life,' said I at last, 'is hell: this is the air those
are the sounds of the bottomless pit! I have a right to deliver
myself from it if I can. The sufferings of this mortal state will
leave me with the heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul. Of the
fanatic's burning eternity I have no fear: there is not a future
state worse than this present one let me break away, and go home
to god!' "I said this whilst I knelt down at, and unlocked a trunk which
contained a brace of loaded pistols: I mean to shoot myself. I
only entertained the intention for a moment; for, not being insane,
the crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair, which had originated
the wish and design of self destruction, was past in a second.

"A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through
the open casement: the storm broke, streamed, thundered, blazed,
and the air grew pure. I then framed and fixed a resolution.
While I walked under the dripping orange trees of my wet garden,
and amongst its drenched pomegranates and pine apples, and while
the refulgent dawn of the tropics kindled round me I reasoned
thus, Jane and now listen; for it was true Wisdom that consoled
me in that hour, and showed me the right path to follow.

"The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed
leaves, and the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty; my
heart, dried up and scorched for a long time, swelled to the tone,
and filled with living blood my being longed for renewal my
soul thirsted for a pure draught. I saw hope revive and felt
regeneration possible. From a flowery arch at the bottom of my
garden I gazed over the sea bluer than the sky: the old world
was beyond; clear prospects opened thus:

"'Go,' said Hope, 'and live again in Europe: there it is not known
what a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound
to you. You may take the maniac with you to England; confine her
with due attendance and precautions at Thornfield: then travel
yourself to what clime you will, and form what new tie you like.
That woman, who has so abused your long suffering, so sullied your
name, so outraged your honour, so blighted your youth, is not your
wife, nor are you her husband. See that she is cared for as her
condition demands, and you have done all that god and humanity
require of you. Let her identity, her connection with yourself,
be buried in oblivion: you are bound to impart them to no living
being. Place her in safety and comfort: shelter her degradation
with secrecy, and leave her.'

"I acted precisely on this suggestion. My father and brother had
not made my marriage known to their acquaintance; because, in the
very first letter I wrote to apprise them of the union having
already begun to experience extreme disgust of its consequences,
and, from the family character and constitution, seeing a hideous
future opening to me I added an urgent charge to keep it
secret: and very soon the infamous conduct of the wife my father
had selected for me was such as to make him blush to own her as his
daughter in law. Far from desiring to publish the connection, he
became as anxious to conceal it as myself.

"To England, then, I conveyed her; a fearful voyage I had with
such a monster in the vessel. Glad was I when I at last got her
to Thornfield, and saw her safely lodged in that third storey room,
of whose secret inner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild
beast's den a goblin's cell. I had some trouble in finding an
attendant for her, as it was necessary to select one on whose fidelity
dependence could be placed; for her ravings would inevitably betray
my secret: besides, she had lucid intervals of days sometimes
weeks which she filled up with abuse of me. At last I hired
Grace Poole from the Grimbsy Retreat. She and the surgeon, Carter
(who dressed Mason's wounds that night he was stabbed and worried),
are the only two I have ever admitted to my confidence.

Mrs. Fairfax may indeed have suspected something, but she could have
gained no precise knowledge as to facts. Grace has, on the whole,
proved a good keeper; though, owing partly to a fault of her own,
of which it appears nothing can cure her, and which is incident to her
harassing profession, her vigilance has been more than once lulled
and baffled. The lunatic is both cunning and malignant; she has
never failed to take advantage of her guardian's temporary lapses;
once to secrete the knife with which she stabbed her brother, and
twice to possess herself of the key of her cell, and issue therefrom
in the night time. On the first of these occasions, she perpetrated
the attempt to burn me in my bed; on the second, she paid that
ghastly visit to you. I thank Providence, who watched over you,
that she then spent her fury on your wedding apparel, which perhaps
brought back vague reminiscences of her own bridal days: but on what
might have happened, I cannot endure to reflect. When I think of
the thing which flew at my throat this morning, hanging its black
and scarlet visage over the nest of my dove, my blood curdles."

"And what, sir," I asked, while he paused, "did you do when you
had settled her here? Where did you go?" "What did I do, Jane?
I transformed myself into a will o' the wisp. Where did I go?
I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the March spirit.
I sought the Continent, and went devious through all its lands.
My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent
woman, whom I could love: a contrast to the fury I left at Thornfield "
"But you could not marry, sir."

"I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought. It
was not my original intention to deceive, as I have deceived you.
I meant to tell my tale plainly, and make my proposals openly: and
it appeared to me so absolutely rational that I should be considered
free to love and be loved, I never doubted some woman might be found
willing and able to understand my case and accept me, in spite of
the curse with which I was burdened." "Well, sir?"

"When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You
open your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a
restless movement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough
for you, and you wanted to read the tablet of one's heart. But
before I go on, tell me what you mean by your, 'Well, sir?' It is
a small phrase very frequent with you; and which many a time has
drawn me on and on through interminable talk: I don't very well
know why." "I mean, What next? How did you proceed? What came
of such an event?" "Precisely! and what do you wish to know now?"
"Whether you found any one you liked: whether you asked her to
marry you; and what she said."

"I can tell you whether I found any one I liked, and whether I
asked her to marry me: but what she said is yet to be recorded in
the book of Fate. For ten long years I roved about, living first
in one capital, then another: sometimes in St. Petersburg; oftener
in Paris; occasionally in Rome, Naples, and Florence. Provided
with plenty of money and the passport of an old name, I could choose
my own society: no circles were closed against me. I sought my
ideal of a woman amongst English ladies, French countesses, Italian
signoras, and German grafinnen. I could not find her. Sometimes,
for a fleeting moment, I thought I caught a glance, heard a tone,
beheld a form, which announced the realisation of my dream: but
I was presently undeserved. You are not to suppose that I desired
perfection, either of mind or person. I longed only for what
suited me for the antipodes of the Creole: and I longed vainly.
Amongst them all I found not one whom, had I been ever so free,
I warned as I was of the risks, the horrors, the loathings of
incongruous unions would have asked to marry me. Disappointment
made me reckless. I tried dissipation never debauchery: that
I hated, and hate. That was my Indian Messalina's attribute:
rooted disgust at it and her restrained me much, even in pleasure.
Any enjoyment that bordered on riot seemed to approach me to her
and her vices, and I eschewed it.

"Yet I could not live alone; so I tried the companionship
of mistresses. The first I chose was Celine Varens another of
those steps which make a man spurn himself when he recalls them.
You already know what she was, and how my liaison with her
terminated. She had two successors: an Italian, Giacinta, and a
German, Clara; both considered singularly handsome. What was
their beauty to me in a few weeks? Giacinta was unprincipled
and violent: I tired of her in three months. Clara was honest
and quiet; but heavy, mindless, and unimpressible: not one
whit to my taste. I was glad to give her a sufficient sum to set
her up in a good line of business, and so get decently rid of her.
But, Jane, I see by your face you are not forming a very favourable
opinion of me just now. You think me an unfeeling, loose
principled rake: don't you?"

"I don't like you so well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir.
Did it not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way,
first with one mistress and then another? You talk of it as a mere
matter of course." "It was with me; and I did not like it. It was a
grovelling fashion of existence: I should never like to return to it.
Hiring a mistress is the next worse thing to buying a slave: both are
often by nature, and always by position, inferior: and to live
familiarly with inferiors is degrading. I now hate the recollection
of the time I passed with Celine, Giacinta, and Clara."

I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain
inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching
that had ever been instilled into me, as under any pretext
with any justification through any temptation to become the
successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with the
same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory. I did
not give utterance to this conviction: it was enough to feel it.
I impressed it on my heart, that it might remain there to serve me
as aid in the time of trial.

"Now, Jane, why don't you say 'Well, sir?' I have not done. You
are looking grave. You disapprove of me still, I see. But let
me come to the point. Last January, rid of all mistresses in a
harsh, bitter frame of mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely
life corroded with disappointment, sourly disposed against all
men, and especially against all womankind (for I began to regard
the notion of an intellectual, faithful, loving woman as a mere
dream), recalled by business, I came back to England.

"On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall.
Abhorred spot! I expected no peace no pleasure there. On a
stile in Hay Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself.
I passed it as negligently as I did the pollard willow opposite
to it: I had no presentiment of what it would be to me; no inward
warning that the arbitress of my life my genius for good or evil
waited there in humble guise. I did not know it, even when, on
the occasion of Mesrour's accident, it came up and gravely offered
me help. Childish and slender creature! It seemed as if a linnet
had hopped to my foot and proposed to bear me on its tiny wing. I
was surly; but the thing would not go: it stood by me with strange
perseverance, and looked and spoke with a sort of authority. I
must be aided, and by that hand: and aided I was.

"When once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new a
fresh sap and sense stole into my frame. It was well I had learnt
that this elf must return to me that it belonged to my house
down below or I could not have felt it pass away from under my
hand, and seen it vanish behind the dim hedge, without singular
regret. I heard you come home that night, Jane, though probably
you were not aware that I thought of you or watched for you. The
next day I observed you myself unseen for half an hour,
while you played with Adele in the gallery. It was a snowy day,
I recollect, and you could not go out of doors. I was in my room;
the door was ajar: I could both listen and watch. Adele claimed
your outward attention for a while; yet I fancied your thoughts
were elsewhere: but you were very patient with her, my little
Jane; you talked to her and amused her a long time. When at last
she left you, you lapsed at once into deep reverie: you betook
yourself slowly to pace the gallery. Now and then, in passing a
casement, you glanced out at the thick falling snow; you listened
to the sobbing wind, and again you paced gently on and dreamed.
I think those day visions were not dark: there was a pleasurable
illumination in your eye occasionally, a soft excitement in your
aspect, which told of no bitter, bilious, hypochondriac brooding:
your look revealed rather the sweet musings of youth when its spirit
follows on willing wings the flight of Hope up and on to an ideal heaven.

The voice of Mrs. Fairfax, speaking to a servant in the hall, wakened
you: and how curiously you smiled to and at yourself, Janet!
There was much sense in your smile: it was very shrewd, and seemed
to make light of your own abstraction. It seemed to say 'My fine
visions are all very well, but I must not forget they are absolutely
unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my brain;
but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough tract
to travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter.'
You ran downstairs and demanded of Mrs. Fairfax some occupation:
the weekly house accounts to make up, or something of that sort,
I think it was. I was vexed with you for getting out of my sight.

"Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you
to my presence. An unusual to me a perfectly new character
I suspected was yours: I desired to search it deeper and know it
better. You entered the room with a look and air at once shy and
independent: you were quaintly dressed much as you are now.
I made you talk: ere long I found you full of strange contrasts.
Your garb and manner were restricted by rule; your air was often
diffident, and altogether that of one refined by nature, but
absolutely unused to society, and a good deal afraid of making
herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or blunder;
yet when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing
eye to your interlocutor's face: there was penetration and power
in each glance you gave; when plied by close questions, you found
ready and round answers.

Very soon you seemed to get used to me: I believe you felt the
existence of sympathy between you and your grim and cross
master, Jane; for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain
pleasant ease tranquillised your manner: snarl as I would, you
showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure at my
moroseness; you watched me, and now and then smiled at me
with a simple yet sagacious grace I cannot describe. I was at once
content and stimulated with what I saw: I liked what I had seen,
and wished to see more. Yet, for a long time, I treated you
distantly, and sought your company rarely. I was an intellectual
epicure, and wished to prolong the gratification of making this
novel and piquant acquaintance: besides, I was for a while troubled
with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom
would fade the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did
not then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the
radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem.

Moreover, I wished to see whether you would seek me if I shunned
you but you did not; you kept in the schoolroom as still as your
own desk and easel; if by chance I met you, you passed me as soon,
and with as little token of recognition, as was consistent with respect.
Your habitual expression in those days, Jane, was a thoughtful
look; not despondent, for you were not sickly; but not buoyant,
for you had little hope, and no actual pleasure. I wondered what
you thought of me, or if you ever thought of me, and resolved to
find this out.

"I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in your
glance, and genial in your manner, when you conversed: I saw you
had a social heart; it was the silent schoolroom it was the
tedium of your life that made you mournful. I permitted myself
the delight of being kind to you; kindness stirred emotion soon:
your face became soft in expression, your tones gentle; I liked my
name pronounced by your lips in a grateful happy accent. I used to
enjoy a chance meeting with you, Jane, at this time: there was a
curious hesitation in your manner: you glanced at me with a slight
trouble a hovering doubt: you did not know what my caprice might
be whether I was going to play the master and be stern, or the
friend and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often to simulate
the first whim; and, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such
bloom and light and bliss rose to your young, wistful features,
I had much ado often to avoid straining you then and there to my
heart."

"Don't talk any more of those days, sir," I interrupted, furtively
dashing away some tears from my eyes; his language was torture
to me; for I knew what I must do and do soon and all these
reminiscences, and these revelations of his feelings only made my
work more difficult. "No, Jane," he returned: "what necessity is
there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer the
Future so much brighter?" I shuddered to hear the infatuated assertion.
"You see now how the case stands do you not?" he continued.
"After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and
half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can
truly love I have found you. You are my sympathy my better
self my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment.
I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion
is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre
and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and, kindling in
pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.

"It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry
you. To tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery: you
know now that I had but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt
to deceive you; but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your
character. I feared early instilled prejudice: I wanted to have
you safe before hazarding confidences. This was cowardly: I should
have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do
now opened to you plainly my life of agony described to you
my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier existence shown
to you, not my RESOLUTION (that word is weak), but my resistless
BENT to love faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well
loved in return. Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge
of fidelity and to give me yours. Jane give it me now." A pause.

"Why are you silent, Jane?" I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand
of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment: full of struggle,
blackness, burning! Not a human being that ever lived could wish
to be loved better than I was loved; and him who thus loved me I
absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce love and idol. One
drear word comprised my intolerable duty "Depart!" "Jane, you
understand what I want of you? Just this promise 'I will be yours,
Mr. Rochester.'" "Mr. Rochester, I will NOT be yours."
Another long silence.

"Jane!" recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down
with grief, and turned me stone cold with ominous terror for
this still voice was the pant of a lion rising "Jane, do you mean to
go one way in the world, and to let me go another?" "I do."

"Jane" (bending towards and embracing me), "do you mean it now?"
"I do." "And now?" softly kissing my forehead and cheek.
"I do," extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely.
"Oh, Jane, this is bitter! This this is wicked. It would not
be wicked to love me." "It would to obey you."
A wild look raised his brows crossed his features: he rose;
but he forebore yet. I laid my hand on the back of a chair for
support: I shook, I feared but I resolved. "One instant, Jane.
Give one glance to my horrible life when you are gone. All
happiness will be torn away with you. What then is left?
For a wife I have but the maniac upstairs: as well might
you refer me to some corpse in yonder churchyard. What shall I
do, Jane? Where turn for a companion and for some hope?"

"Do as I do: trust in god and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope
to meet again there." "Then you will not yield?" "No."
"Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed?"
His voice rose. "I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to
die tranquil." "Then you snatch love and innocence from me?
You fling me back on lust for a passion vice for an occupation?"
"Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at
it for myself. We were born to strive and endure you as well
as I: do so. You will forget me before I forget you."

"You make me a liar by such language: you sully my honour. I
declared I could not change: you tell me to my face I shall change
soon. And what a distortion in your judgment, what a perversity
in your ideas, is proved by your conduct! Is it better to drive
a fellow creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law,
no man being injured by the breach? for you have neither relatives
nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me?"

This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason
turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting
him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured
wildly. "Oh, comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his
danger look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong
nature; consider the recklessness following on despair soothe him;
save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the
world cares for YOU? or who will be injured by what you do?"

Still indomitable was the reply "I care for myself. The more
solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more
I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by god; sanctioned
by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was
sane, and not mad as I am now. Laws and principles are not for
the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments
as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour;
stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual
convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They
have a worth so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe
it now, it is because I am insane quite insane: with my veins
running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its
throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all
I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot."

I did. Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so.
his fury was wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a
moment, whatever followed; he crossed the floor and seized my arm
and grasped my waist. He seemed to devour me with his flaming
glance: physically, I felt, at the moment, powerless as stubble
exposed to the draught and glow of a furnace: mentally, I still
possessed my soul, and with it the certainty of ultimate safety.
The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter often an unconscious,
but still a truthful interpreter in the eye. My eye rose to his; and
while I looked in his fierce face I gave an involuntary sigh; his
gripe was painful, and my over taxed strength almost exhausted.

"Never," said he, as he ground his teeth, "Never was anything at once
so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!"
(And he shook me with the force of his hold.) "I could bend her
with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent,
if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the
resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with
more than courage with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its
cage, I cannot get at it the savage, beautiful creature! If
I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the
captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate
would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its
clay dwelling place. And it is you, spirit with will and energy,
and virtue and purity that I want: not alone your brittle frame.
Of yourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my
heart, if you would: seized against your will, you will elude the
grasp like an essence you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance.
Oh! come, Jane, come!"

As he said this, he released me from his clutch, and only looked
at me. The look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain:
only an idiot, however, would have succumbed now. I had dared and
baffled his fury; I must elude his sorrow: I retired to the door.
"You are going, Jane?" "I am going, sir." "You are leaving me?" "Yes."
"You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My
deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?"
What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard it was to
reiterate firmly, "I am going." "Jane!" "Mr. Rochester!"
"Withdraw, then, I consent; but remember, you leave me here in
anguish. Go up to your own room; think over all I have said, and,
Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings think of me."

He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. "Oh,
Jane! my hope my love my life!" broke in anguish from his
lips. Then came a deep, strong sob. I had already gained the door;
but, reader, I walked back walked back as determinedly as I
had retreated. I knelt down by him; I turned his face from the
cushion to me; I kissed his cheek; I smoothed his hair with my hand.
"God bless you, my dear master!" I said. "god keep you from harm
and wrong direct you, solace you reward you well for your
past kindness to me." "Little Jane's love would have been my
best reward," he answered; "without it, my heart is broken.
But Jane will give me her love: yes nobly, generously."

Up the blood rushed to his face; forth flashed the fire from
his eyes; erect he sprang; he held his arms out; but I evaded the
embrace, and at once quitted the room. "Farewell!" was the cry
of my heart as I left him. Despair added, "Farewell for ever!"

That night I never thought to sleep; but a slumber fell on me as
soon as I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the
scenes of childhood: I dreamt I lay in the red room at Gateshead;
that the night was dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears.
The light that long ago had struck me into syncope, recalled in
this vision, seemed glidingly to mount the wall, and tremblingly to
pause in the centre of the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head
to look: the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim; the gleam
was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I
watched her come watched with the strangest anticipation; as
though some word of doom were to be written on her disk. She broke
forth as never moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated
the sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon, but a white
human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward.
It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably
distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my heart.

"My daughter, flee temptation." "Mother, I will." So I answered after
I had waked from the trance like dream. It was yet night, but July
nights are short: soon after midnight, dawn comes. "It cannot be too
early to commence the task I have to fulfil," thought I. I rose: I was
dressed; for I had taken off nothing but my shoes. I knew where to
find in my drawers some linen, a locket, a ring. In seeking these
articles, I encountered the beads of a pearl necklace Mr. Rochester
had forced me to accept a few days ago. I left that; it was not mine:
it was the visionary bride's who had melted in air. The other articles
I made up in a parcel; my purse, containing twenty shillings
(it was all I had), I put in my pocket: I tied on my straw bonnet,
pinned my shawl, took the parcel and my slippers, which I would
not put on yet, and stole from my room.

"Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax!" I whispered, as I glided past her
door. "Farewell, my darling Adele!" I said, as I glanced towards
the nursery. No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace
her. I had to deceive a fine ear: for aught I knew it might now
be listening. I would have got past Mr. Rochester's chamber without
a pause; but my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold,
my foot was forced to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was
walking restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed
while I listened. There was a heaven a temporary heaven in this
room for me, if I chose: I had but to go in and to say, "Mr. Rochester,
I will love you and live with you through life till death," and a fount
of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought of this.

That kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with
impatience for day. He would send for me in the morning; I should
be gone. He would have me sought for: vainly. He would feel
himself forsaken; his love rejected: he would suffer; perhaps
grow desperate. I thought of this too. My hand moved towards the
lock: I caught it back, and glided on.

Drearily I wound my way downstairs: I knew what I had to do, and
I did it mechanically. I sought the key of the side door in the
kitchen; I sought, too, a phial of oil and a feather; I oiled the
key and the lock. I got some water, I got some bread: for perhaps
I should have to walk far; and my strength, sorely shaken of late,
must not break down. All this I did without one sound. I opened
the door, passed out, shut it softly. Dim dawn glimmered in the
yard. The great gates were closed and locked; but a wicket in
one of them was only latched. Through that I departed: it, too,
I shut; and now I was out of Thornfield.

A mile off, beyond the fields, lay a road which stretched in the
contrary direction to Millcote; a road I had never travelled, but
often noticed, and wondered where it led: thither I bent my steps.
No reflection was to be allowed now: not one glance was to be
cast back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given
either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly
sweet so deadly sad that to read one line of it would dissolve
my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank:
something like the world when the deluge was gone by.

I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise. I
believe it was a lovely summer morning: I know my shoes, which I
had put on when I left the house, were soon wet with dew. But I
looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature.
He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold,
thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block
and axe edge; of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave
gaping at the end: and I thought of drear flight and homeless
wandering and oh! with agony I thought of what I left. I could
not help it. I thought of him now in his room watching the
sunrise; hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him
and be his. I longed to be his; I panted to return: it was not
too late; I could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement.

As yet my flight, I was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and
be his comforter his pride; his redeemer from misery, perhaps
from ruin. Oh, that fear of his self abandonment far worse than
my abandonment how it goaded me! It was a barbed arrow head
in my breast; it tore me when I tried to extract it; it sickened
me when remembrance thrust it farther in. Birds began singing in
brake and copse: birds were faithful to their mates; birds were
emblems of love. What was I? In the midst of my pain of heart and
frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I had no solace
from self approbation: none even from self respect. I had injured
wounded left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes. Still
I could not turn, nor retrace one step. god must have led me on.
As to my own will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one
and stifled the other. I was weeping wildly as I walked along my
solitary way: fast, fast I went like one delirious. A weakness,
beginning inwardly, extending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell:
I lay on the ground some minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf.
I had some fear or hope that here I should die: but I was
soon up; crawling forwards on my hands and knees, and then again
raised to my feet as eager and as determined as ever to reach the road.

When I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge;
and while I sat, I heard wheels, and saw a coach come on. I stood
up and lifted my hand; it stopped. I asked where it was going:
the driver named a place a long way off, and where I was sure Mr.
Rochester had no connections. I asked for what sum he would take
me there; he said thirty shillings; I answered I had but twenty;
well, he would try to make it do. He further gave me leave to get
into the inside, as the vehicle was empty: I entered, was shut
in, and it rolled on its way.

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes
never shed such stormy, scalding, heart wrung tears as poured from
mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and
so agonised as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like
me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Deluxe Edition Chapter 28.>