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 widest-winged 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 chamber-ceiling—I now heard a struggle: a deadly one it seemed from
the noise; and a half-smothered 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 chamber-door 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!”

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“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.”

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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 easy-chair was
near the bed-head: 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 corpse-like face; he asked for my smelling-bottle, 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?”

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“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 arch-traitor—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 carrion-seeking 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

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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!”

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“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 to-night, 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 re-entrance), “take this key: go down into my bedroom, and walk straight
forward into my dressing-room: open the top drawer of the wardrobe and take out a
clean shirt and neck-handkerchief: bring them here; and be nimble.”
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 waist-coat. Where did you leave
your furred cloak? You can’t travel a mile without that, I know, in this damned cold

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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 clod-hopping messenger
would never do at this juncture. You must open the middle drawer of my toilet-table
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 water-bottle 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 side-
passage door, and tell the driver of the post-chaise 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 half-past 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 post-chaise, 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 blossom-blanched orchard trees, whose boughs
drooped like white garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard; the carriage
horses stamped from time to time in their closed stables: all else was still.

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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 yard-gates.
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 the 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 old-fashioned flowers, stocks,
sweet-williams, primroses, pansies, mingled with southernwood, sweet-briar, 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.”

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“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 crater-crust 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 light-footed running, no neat-handed 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.”

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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. Heart-
weary and soul-withered, 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 tree-tops; but their song, however sweet, was inarticulate.
Again Mr. Rochester propounded his query:
“Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant, man justified in
daring the world’s opinion, in order to attach to him for ever this gentle, gracious, genial
stranger, thereby securing his own peace of mind and regeneration of life?”
“Sir,” I answered, “a wanderer’s repose or a sinner’s reformation should never depend
on a fellow-creature. 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.”

165

“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.”