Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Deluxe Edition Chapter 36.

The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or
two with arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and
wardrobe, in the order wherein I should wish to leave them
during a brief absence. Meantime, I heard St. John quit his
room. He stopped at my door: I feared he would knock no,
but a slip of paper was passed under the door. I took it up.
It bore these words: "You left me too suddenly last night.
Had you stayed but a little longer, you would have laid your
hand on the christian's cross and the angel's crown. I shall
expect your clear decision when I return this day fortnight.
Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not into temptation:
the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh, I see, is weak. I shall
pray for you hourly. Yours, ST. JOHN."

"My spirit," I answered mentally, "is willing to do what is right;
and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will
of Heaven, when once that will is distinctly known to me. At any
rate, it shall be strong enough to search inquire to grope an
outlet from this cloud of doubt, and find the open day of certainty."
It was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and chilly:
rain beat fast on my casement. I heard the front door open, and
St. John pass out. Looking through the window, I saw him traverse
the garden. He took the way over the misty moors in the direction
of Whitcross there he would meet the coach. "In a few more hours
I shall succeed you in that track, cousin," thought I: "I too have
a coach to meet at Whitcross. I too have some to see and ask after
in England, before I depart for ever." It wanted yet two hours of
breakfast time. I filled the interval in walking softly about my
room, and pondering the visitation which had given my plans
their present bent. I recalled that inward sensation I had
experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable
strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned
whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in ME not in the
external world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression a
delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an
inspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the
earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas's
prison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed
its bands it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang
trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my
startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which
neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success
of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the
cumbrous body.

"Ere many days," I said, as I terminated my musings, "I will know
something of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Letters
have proved of no avail personal inquiry shall replace them."
At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a
journey, and should be absent at least four days."Alone, Jane?"
they asked. "Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about
whom I had for some time been uneasy." They might have said,
as I have no doubt they thought, that they had believed me to be
without any friends save them: for, indeed, I had often said so;
but, with their true natural delicacy, they abstained from
comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was well
enough to travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I replied,
that nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped
soon to alleviate.

It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled with
no inquiries no surmises. Having once explained to them that
I could not now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely
acquiesced in the silence with which I pursued them, according to
me the privilege of free action I should under similar circumstances
have accorded them. I left Moor House at three o'clock p.m., and
soon after four I stood at the foot of the sign post of Whitcross,
waiting the arrival of the coach which was to take me to distant
Thornfield. Amidst the silence of those solitary roads and desert
hills, I heard it approach from a great distance. It was the same
vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted one summer evening
on this very spot how desolate, and hopeless, and objectless!
It stopped as I beckoned. I entered not now obliged to part
with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation.
Once more on the road to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger
pigeon flying home. It was a journey of six and thirty hours.
I had set out from Whitcross on a Tuesday afternoon, and early
on the succeeding Thursday morning the coach stopped to water
the horses at a wayside inn, situated in the midst of scenery whose
green hedges and large fields and low pastoral hills (how mild of
feature and verdant of hue compared with the stern North Midland
moors of Morton!) met my eye like the lineaments of a once familiar
face. Yes, I knew the character of this landscape: I was sure we were
near my bourne. "How far is Thornfield Hall from here?" I asked of
the ostler. "Just two miles, ma'am, across the fields."

"My journey is closed," I thought to myself. I got out of the
coach, gave a box I had into the ostler's charge, to be kept till
I called for it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was
going: the brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I
read in gilt letters, "The Rochester Arms." My heart leapt up: I
was already on my master's very lands. It fell again: the thought
struck it: "Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel,
for aught you know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards
which you hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you
have nothing to do with him: you dare not speak to him or seek
his presence. You have lost your labour you had better go no
farther," urged the monitor. "Ask information of the people at the
inn; they can give you all you seek: they can solve your doubts at
once. Go up to that man, and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home."
The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to
act on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair.
To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see
the Hall under the ray of her star. There was the stile before
me the very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf,
distracted with a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me, on
the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I well knew what course
I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of them. How fast I
walked! How I ran sometimes! How I looked forward to catch the
first view of the well known woods! With what feelings I welcomed
single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill
between them!

At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing
broke the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on I
hastened. Another field crossed a lane threaded and there
were the courtyard walls the back offices: the house itself,
the rookery still hid. "My first view of it shall be in front," I
determined, "where its bold battlements will strike the eye nobly at
once, and where I can single out my master's very window: perhaps
he will be standing at it he rises early: perhaps he is now
walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in front. Could I but
see him! but a moment! Surely, in that case, I should not be
so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell I am not certain. And
if I did what then? god bless him! What then? Who would be
hurt by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me? I
rave: perhaps at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the
Pyrenees, or on the tideless sea of the south." I had coasted along
the lower wall of the orchard turned its angle: there was a gate
just there, opening into the meadow, between two stone pillars
crowned by stone balls. From behind one pillar I could peep
round quietly at the full front of the mansion. I advanced my
head with precaution, desirous to ascertain if any bedroom
window blinds were yet drawn up: battlements, windows,
long front all from this sheltered station were at my command.

The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this
survey. I wonder what they thought. They must have considered
I was very careful and timid at first, and that gradually I grew
very bold and reckless. A peep, and then a long stare; and then
a departure from my niche and a straying out into the meadow; and
a sudden stop full in front of the great mansion, and a protracted,
hardy gaze towards it. "What affectation of diffidence was this
at first?" they might have demanded; "what stupid regardlessness
now?" Hear an illustration, reader. A lover finds his mistress
asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a glimpse of her fair
face without waking her. He steals softly over the grass, careful
to make no sound; he pauses fancying she has stirred: he
withdraws: not for worlds would he be seen. All is still: he again
advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features:
he lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of
beauty warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How hurried
was their first glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How
he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he
dared not, a moment since, touch with his finger! How he calls
aloud a name, and drops his burden, and gazes on it wildly! He
thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no longer fears to
waken by any sound he can utter by any movement he can make.
He thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone dead.

I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a
blackened ruin. No need to cower behind a gate post, indeed!
to peep up at chamber lattices, fearing life was astir behind
them! No need to listen for doors opening to fancy steps on
the pavement or the gravel walk! The lawn, the grounds were
trodden and waste: the portal yawned void. The front was, as I
had once seen it in a dream, but a well like wall, very high and
very fragile looking, perforated with paneless windows: no
roof, no battlements, no chimneys all had crashed in.
And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of
a lonesome wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here
had never received an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault
in a church aisle. The grim blackness of the stones told by what
fate the Hall had fallen by conflagration: but how kindled?
What story belonged to this disaster? What loss, besides mortar and
marble and wood work had followed upon it? Had life been wrecked
as well as property? If so, whose? Dreadful question: there was
no one here to answer it not even dumb sign, mute token.

In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated
interior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late
occurrence. Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that
void arch, winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements; for,
amidst the drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation:
grass and weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen
rafters. And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of this
wreck? In what land? Under what auspices? My eye involuntarily
wandered to the grey church tower near the gates, and I asked,
"Is he with Damer de Rochester, sharing the shelter of his narrow
marble house?" Some answer must be had to these questions. I
could find it nowhere but at the inn, and thither, ere long, I
returned. The host himself brought my breakfast into the parlour.
I requested him to shut the door and sit down: I had some questions
to ask him. But when he complied, I scarcely knew how to begin;
such horror had I of the possible answers. And yet the spectacle
of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure for a tale of
misery. The host was a respectable looking, middle aged man.
"You know Thornfield Hall, of course?" I managed to say at last.
"Yes, ma'am; I lived there once." "Did you?" Not in my time,
I thought: you are a stranger to me. "I was the late Mr.
Rochester's butler," he added. The late! I seem to have
received, with full force, the blow I had been trying to evade.
"The late!" I gasped. "Is he dead?"

"I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward's father," he explained.
I breathed again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully assured by
these words that Mr. Edward MY Mr. Rochester (god bless him,
wherever he was!) was at least alive: was, in short, "the present
gentleman." Gladdening words! It seemed I could hear all that was
to come whatever the disclosures might be with comparative
tranquillity. Since he was not in the grave, I could bear, I
thought, to learn that he was at the Antipodes. "Is Mr.
Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?" I asked, knowing,
of course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring
the direct question as to where he really was.

"No, ma'am oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are
a stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened
last autumn, Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down
just about harvest time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense
quantity of valuable property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture
could be saved. The fire broke out at dead of night, and before
the engines arrived from Millcote, the building was one mass of
flame. It was a terrible spectacle: I witnessed it myself."
"At dead of night!" I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour
of fatality at Thornfield. "Was it known how it originated?" I
demanded. "They guessed, ma'am: they guessed. Indeed, I should
say it was ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware,"
he continued, edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking
low, "that there was a lady a a lunatic, kept in the house?"
"I have heard something of it." "She was kept in very close
confinement, ma'am: people even for some years was not absolutely
certain of her existence. No one saw her: they only knew by rumour
that such a person was at the Hall; and who or what she was it was
difficult to conjecture. They said Mr. Edward had brought her from
abroad, and some believed she had been his mistress. But a queer thing
happened a year since a very queer thing." I feared now to hear my own
story. I endeavoured to recall him to the main fact. "And this lady?"
"This lady, ma'am," he answered, "turned out to be Mr. Rochester's
wife! The discovery was brought about in the strangest way. There
was a young lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in "
"But the fire," I suggested. "I'm coming to that, ma'am that Mr.
Edward fell in love with. The servants say they never saw anybody
so much in love as he was: he was after her continually. They used to
watch him servants will, you know, ma'am and he set store on her
past everything: for all, nobody but him thought her so very
handsome. She was a little small thing, they say, almost like a child.
I never saw her myself; but I've heard Leah, the house maid, tell of
her. Leah liked her well enough. Mr. Rochester was about forty,
and this governess not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen of
his age fall in love with girls, they are often like as if they were
bewitched. Well, he would marry her."

"You shall tell me this part of the story another time," I said;
"but now I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about
the fire. Was it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had
any hand in it?" "You've hit it, ma'am: it's quite certain that it
was her, and nobody but her, that set it going. She had a woman
to take care of her called Mrs. Poole an able woman in her line,
and very trustworthy, but for one fault a fault common to a deal
of them nurses and matrons she KEPT A PRIVATE BOTTLE OF
GIN BY HER, and now and then took a drop over much. It is
excusable, for she had a hard life of it: but still it was dangerous;
for when Mrs. Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water, the
mad lady, who was as cunning as a witch, would take the keys
out of her pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming
about the house, doing any wild mischief that came into her head.
They say she had nearly burnt her husband in his bed once: but I
don't know about that. However, on this night, she set fire first
to the hangings of the room next her own, and then she got down
to a lower storey, and made her way to the chamber that had been
the governess's (she was like as if she knew somehow how matters
had gone on, and had a spite at her) and she kindled the bed there;
but there was nobody sleeping in it, fortunately. The governess had
run away two months before; and for all Mr. Rochester sought her
as if she had been the most precious thing he had in the world, he never
could hear a word of her; and he grew savage quite savage on
his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but he got dangerous
after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent Mrs. Fairfax,
the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did it
handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and she
deserved it she was a very good woman. Miss Adele, a ward he
had, was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the
gentry, and shut himself up like a hermit at the Hall."

"What! Did he not leave England?" "Leave England? Bless you, no!
He would not cross the door stones of the house, except at night,
when he walked just like a ghost about the grounds and in the
orchard as if he had lost his senses which it is my opinion he had;
for a more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he was before
that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma'am.
He was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are,
and he was not so very handsome; but he had a courage and a will
of his own, if ever man had. I knew him from a boy, you see: and
for my part, I have often wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in
the sea before she came to Thornfield Hall." "Then Mr. Rochester
was at home when the fire broke out?" "Yes, indeed was he; and
he went up to the attics when all was burning above and below,
and got the servants out of their beds and helped them down
himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And
then they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she
was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and
shouting out till they could hear her a mile off: I saw her and
heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had long
black hair: we could see it streaming against the flames as she
stood. I witnessed, and several more witnessed, Mr. Rochester
ascend through the sky light on to the roof; we heard him call
'Bertha!' We saw him approach her; and then, ma'am, she yelled
and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the
pavement." "Dead?" "Dead! Ay, dead as the stones on which her
brains and blood were scattered." "Good god!"

"You may well say so, ma'am: it was frightful!" He shuddered.
"And afterwards?" I urged. "Well, ma'am, afterwards the house
was burnt to the ground: there are only some bits of walls
standing now." "Were any other lives lost?" "No perhaps it
would have been better if there had." "What do you mean?"
"Poor Mr. Edward!" he ejaculated, "I little thought ever to have
seen it! Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his
first marriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while he
had one living: but I pity him, for my part." "You said he was alive?"
I exclaimed. "Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better he dead."
"Why? How?" My blood was again running cold. "Where is he?" I
demanded. "Is he in England?" "Ay ay he's in England; he can't get
out of England, I fancy he's a fixture now." What agony was this!
And the man seemed resolved to protract it. "He is stone blind,"
he said at last. "Yes, he is stone blind, is Mr. Edward." I had dreaded
worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strength to ask what
had caused this calamity. "It was all his own courage, and a body
may say, his kindness, in a way, ma'am: he wouldn't leave the house
till every one else was out before him. As he came down the great
staircase at last, after Mrs. Rochester had flung herself from the
battlements, there was a great crash all fell. He was taken out
from under the ruins, alive, but sadly hurt: a beam had fallen in
such a way as to protect him partly; but one eye was knocked
out, and one hand so crushed that Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had
to amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed: he lost the sight
of that also. He is now helpless, indeed blind and a cripple."

"Where is he? Where does he now live?" "At Ferndean, a manor
house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off: quite a desolate
spot." "Who is with him?" "Old John and his wife: he would
have none else. He is quite broken down, they say." "Have you
any sort of conveyance?" "We have a chaise, ma'am, a very
handsome chaise." "Let it be got ready instantly; and if your
post boy can drive me to Ferndean before dark this day,
I'll pay both you and him twice the hire you usually demand."

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Deluxe Edition Chapter 37.>