ed hardy blog

A letter, edged with black, announced the day of my master’s return. Isabella was dead; and he wrote to bid me get mourning for skechers shoes his daughter, and arrange a room, and other accommodations, for his youthful nephew. Catherine ran wild with joy at the idea of welcoming her father back; and indulged most sanguine anticipations of the innumerable excellences of her `real’ cousin. The evening of their expected arrival came. Since early morning, she had been busy ordering her own small affairs; and now, attired in her new black frock–poor thing! her aunt’s death impressed her with no definite sorrow–she obliged me, by constant worrying, to walk with her down through the grounds to meet them.

`Linton is just six months younger than I am,’ she chattered, as we strolled leisurely over the swells and hollows of mossy turf, under shadow of the trees. `How delightful it will be to have him for a playfellow! Aunt Isabella sent papa a beautiful lock of his hair; it was lighter than mine–more flaxen, and quite as fine. I have it carefully preserved in a little glass box: and I’ve often thought what pleasure it would be to see its owner. Oh! I am happy–and papa, dear, dear papa! Come, Ellen, let us run! come, run.’

She ran, and returned and ran again, many times before my sober footsteps reached the gate, and then she seated herself on the grassy bank beside the path, and tried to wait patiently; but that was impossible: she couldn’t be still a minute.

`How long they are!’ she exclaimed. `Ah, I see some dust on the road they are coming? No! When will they be here? May we not go a little way–half a mile, Ellen: only just half a mile? Do say yes: to that clump of birches at the turn!’

I refused staunchly. At length her suspense was ended: the travelling carriage rolled in sight. Miss Cathy shrieked and stretched out her arms, as soon as she caught her father’s face looking from the window. He descended, nearly as eager as herself: and a considerable interval elapsed ere they had a thought to spare for any but themselves. While they exchanged caresses, I took a peep in to see after Linton. He was asleep in a corner, wrapped in a warm, fur-lined cloak, as if it had been winter. A pale, delicate, effeminate boy, who might have been taken for my master’s younger brother, so strong was the resemblance: but there was a sickly peevishness in his aspect, that Edgar Linton never had. The latter saw me looking; and having shaken hands, advised me to close the door, and leave him undisturbed; for the journey had fatigued him. Cathy would fain have taken one glance, but her father told her to come on, and they walked together up the park, while I hastened before to prepare the servants.

`Now, darling,’ said Mr Linton, addressing his daughter, as they halted at the bottom of the front steps; `your cousin is not so strong or so merry as you are, and he has lost his mother, remember, a very short time since; therefore, don’t expect him to play and run about with you directly. And don’t harass him much by talking: let him be quiet this evening, at least, will you?’

Yes, yes, papa,’ answered Catherine: `but I do want to see him; and he hasn’t once looked out.’

The carriage stopped; and the sleeper being roused, was lifted to the ground by his uncle.

`This is your cousin Cathy, Linton,’ he said, putting their little hands together. `She’s fond of you already; and mind you don’t grieve her by crying tonight. Try to be cheerful now; the travelling is at an end, and you have nothing to do but rest and amuse yourself as you please.’

`Let me go to bed, then,’ answered the boy, shrinking from Catherine’s salute; and he put his fingers to his eyes to remove incipient tears.

`Come, come, there’s a good child,’ I whispered, leading him in.

`You’ll make her weep too–see how sorry she is for you!’

I do not know whether it were sorrow for him, but his cousin put on as sad a countenance as himself, and returned to her father. All three entered, and mounted to the library, where tea was laid ready. I proceeded to remove Linton’s cap and mantle, and placed him on a chair by the table; but he was no sooner seated than he began to cry afresh. My master inquired what was the matter.

`I can’t sit on a chair,’ sobbed the boy.

`Go to the sofa, then, and Ellen shall bring you some tea, answered his uncle patiently.

He had been greatly tried during the journey, I felt convinced, by his fretful ailing charge. Linton slowly trailed himself off, and lay down. Cathy carried a footstool and her cup to his side. At first she sat silent; but that could not last: she had resolved to make a pet of her little cousin, as she would have him to be; and she commenced stroking his curls, and kissing his cheek, and offering him tea in her saucer, like a baby. This pleased him, for he was not much better: he dried his eyes, and lightened into a faint smile.

`Oh, he’ll do very well,’ said the master to me, sketcher shoes after watching them a minute. `Very well, if we can keep him, Ellen. The company of a child of his own age will instil new spirit into him soon, and by wishing for strength he’ll gain it.’

`Ay, if we can keep him!’ I mused to myself; and sore misgivings came over me that there was slight hope of that. And then, I thought, however will that weakling live at Wuthering Heights, between his father and Hareton, what playmates and instructors they’ll be. Our doubts were presently decided even earlier than I expected. I had just taken the children upstairs, after tea was finished, and seen Linton asleep–he would not suffer me to leave him till that was the case–I had come down, and was standing by the table in the hall, lighting a bedroom candle for Mr Edgar, when a maid stepped out of the kitchen and informed me that Mr Heathcliff’s servant Joseph was at the door, and wished to speak with the master.

`I shall ask him what he wants first,’ I said, in considerable trepidation. `A very unlikely hour to be troubling people, and the instant they have returned from a long journey. I don’t think the master can see him.’

Joseph had advanced through the kitchen as I uttered these words, and now presented himself in the hall. He was donned in his Sunday garments, with his most sanctimonious and sourest face, and, holding his hat in one hand and his stick in the other, he proceeded to clean his shoes on the mat.

`Good evening, Joseph,’ I said coldly. `What business brings you here tonight?’

`It’s Maister Linton Aw mun spake tull,’ he answered, waving me disdainfully aside.

`Mr Linton is going to bed; unless you have something particular to say, I’m sure he won’t hear it now,’ I continued. `You had better sit down in there, and entrust your message to me.

`Which is his rahm?’ pursued the fellow, surveying the range of closed doors.

I perceived he was bent on refusing my mediation, so very reluctantly I went up to the library, and announced the unseasonable visitor, advising that he should be dismissed till next day. Mr Linton had no time to empower me to do so, for Joseph mounted close at my heels, and, pushing into the apartment, planted himself at the far side of the table, with his two fists clapped on the head of his stick, and began in an elevated tone, as if anticipating opposition:

`Heathcliff has send me for his lad, and Aw munn’t goa back ’bout him.’

Edgar Linton was silent a minute; an expression of exceeding sorrow overcast his features: he would have pitied the child on his own account; but, recalling Isabella’s hopes and fears, and anxious wishes for her son, and her commendations of him to his care, he grieved bitterly at the prospect of yielding him up, and searched in his heart how it might be avoided. No plan offered itself: the very exhibition of any desire to keep him would have rendered the claimant more peremptory: there was nothing left but to resign him. However, he was not going to rouse him from his sleep.

`Tell Mr Heathcliff,’ he answered calmly, `that his son shall come to Wuthering Heights tomorrow. He is in bed, and too tired to go the distance now. You may also tell him that the mother of Linton desired him to remain under my guardianship; and, at present, his health is very precarious.’

`Noa!’ said Joseph, giving a thud with his prop on the floor, and assuming an authoritative air; `noa! that manes nowt. Hathecliff maks noa ‘cahnt uh t’ mother, nur yah norther; bud he’ll hev his lad; und Aw mun tak him–soa nah yah knaw!’

`You shall not tonight!’ answered Linton decisively. `Walk downstairs at once, and, repeat to your master what I have said. Ellen, show him down. Go–’

And, aiding the indignant elder with a skecher shoes lift by the arm, he rid the room of him, and closed the door.

`Varrah weell!’ shouted Joseph, as he slowly drew off. `Tuhmorn, he’s come hisseln, un thrust him aht, if yah darr!

The twelve years, continued Mrs Dean, following that dismal period, were the happiest of my life: my greatest troubles in their skecher shoes passage rose from our little lady’s trifling illnesses, which she had to experience in common with all children, rich and poor. For the rest, after the first six months, she grew like a larch, and could walk and talk too, in her own way, before the heath blossomed a second time over Mrs Linton’s dust. She was the most winning thing that ever brought sunshine into a desolate house: a real beauty in face, with the Earnshaws’ handsome dark eyes, but the Lintons’ fair skin and small features, and yellow curling hair. Her spirit was high, though not rough, and qualified by a heart sensitive and lively to excess in its affections. That capacity for intense attachments reminded me of her mother: still she did not resemble her; for she could be soft and mild as a dove, and she had a gentle voice and pensive expression: her anger was never furious; her love never fierce: it was deep and tender. However, it must be acknowledged, she had faults to foil her gifts. A propensity to be saucy was one; and a perverse will, that indulged children invariably acquire, whether they be good-tempered or cross. If a servant chanced to vex her, it was always–`I shall tell papa!’ And if he reproved her, even by a look, you would have thought it a heart-breaking business: I don’t believe he ever did speak a harsh word to her. He took her education entirely on himself, and made it an amusement. Fortunately, curiosity and a quick intellect urged her into an apt scholar: she learned rapidly and eagerly, and did honour to his teaching.

Till she reached the age of thirteen, she had not once been beyond the range of the park by herself. Mr Linton would take her with him a mile or so outside, on rare occasions; but he trusted her to no one else. Gimmerton was an unsubstantial name in her ears; the chapel, the only building she had approached or entered, except her own home. Wuthering Heights and Mr Heathcliff did not exist for her: she was a perfect recluse; and, apparently, perfectly contented. Sometimes, indeed, while surveying the country from her nursery window, she would observe:

`Ellen, how long will it be before I can walk to the top of those hills? I wonder what lies on the other side–is it the sea?’

`No, Miss Cathy,’ I would answer; `it is hills again, just like these.’

`And what are those golden rocks like when you stand under them?’ she once asked.

The abrupt descent of Penistone Crags particularly attracted her notice; especially when the setting sun shone on it and the topmost heights, and the whole extent of landscape besides lay in shadow. I explained that they were bare masses of stone, with hardly enough earth in their clefts to nourish a stunted tree.

`And why are they bright so long after it is evening here?’ she pursued.

`Because they are a great deal higher up than we are,’ replied I; `you could not climb them, they are too high and steep. In winter the frost is always there before it comes to us; and deep into summer I have found snow under that black hollow on the north-east side!’

`Oh, you have been on them!’ she cried gleefully. `Then I can go, too, when I am a woman. Has papa been, Ellen?’

`Papa would tell you, miss,’ I answered hastily, `that they are not worth the trouble of visiting. The moors, where you ramble with him, are much nicer; and Thrushcross Park is the finest place in the world.’

`But I know the park, and I don’t know those,’ she murmured to herself. `And I should delight to look round me from the brow of that tallest point: my little pony Minny shall take me some time.’

One of the maids mentioning the Fairy Cave, quite turned her head with a desire to fulfil this project: she teased Mr Linton about it; and he promised she should have the journey when she got older. But Miss Catherine measured her age by months, and, `Now, am I old enough to go to Penistone Crags?’ was the constant question in her mouth. The road thither wound close by Wuthering Heights. Edgar had not the heart to pass it; so she received as constantly the answer, `Not yet, love: not yet.

I said Mrs Heathcliff lived above a dozen years after quitting her husband. Her family were of a delicate constitution: she and Edgar both lacked the ruddy health that you will generally meet in these parts. What her last illness was, I am not certain: I conjecture, they died of the same thing, a kind of fever, slow at its commencement, but incurable, and rapidly consuming life to wards the close. She wrote to inform her brother of the probable conclusion of a four months’ indisposition under which she had suffered, and entreated him to come to her, if possible; for she had much to settle, and she wished to bid him adieu, and deliver Linton safely into his hands. Her hope was, that Linton might be left with him, as he had been with her: his father, she would fain convince herself, had no desire to assume the burden of his maintenance or education. My master hesitated not a moment in complying with her request: reluctant as he was to leave home at ordinary calls, he flew to answer this; commending Catherine to my peculiar vigilance, in his absence, with reiterated orders that she must not wander out of the park, even under my escort: he did not calculate on her going unaccompanied.

He was away three weeks. The first day or two, my charge sat in a corner of the library, too sad for either reading or playing: in that quiet state she caused me little trouble; but it was succeeded by an interval of impatient fretful weariness; and being too busy, and too old then, to run up and down amusing her, I hit on a method by which she might entertain herself. I used to send her on her travels round the grounds–now on foot, and now on a pony; indulging her with a patient audience of all her real and imaginary adventures, when she returned.

The summer shone in full prime; and she took such a taste for this solitary rambling that she often contrived to remain out from breakfast till tea; and then the evenings were spent in recounting her fanciful tales. I did not fear her breaking bounds; because the gates were generally locked, and I thought she would scarcely venture forth alone, if they had stood wide open. Unluckily, my confidence proved misplaced. Catherine came to me, one morning, at eight o’clock, and said she was that day an Arabian merchant, going to cross the desert with his caravan; and I must give her plenty of provision for herself and beasts: a horse, and three camels, personated by a large hound and a couple of pointers. I got together good store of dainties, and slung them in a basket on one side of the saddle; and she sprang up as gay as a fairy, sheltered by her wide-brimmed hat and gauze veil from the July sun, and trotted off with a merry laugh, mocking my cautious counsel to avoid galloping, and come back early. The naughty thing never made her appearance at tea. One traveller, the hound, being an old dog and fond of its ease, returned; but neither Cathy, nor the pony, nor the two pointers were visible in any direction: I dispatched emissaries down this path, and that path, and at last went wandering in search of her myself. There was a labourer working at a fence round a plantation, on the borders of the grounds. I inquired of him if he had seen our young lady.

`I saw her at morn,’ he replied; `she would have me to cut her a hazel switch, and then she leapt her Galloway over the hedge yonder, where it is lowest, and galloped out of sight.’

You may guess how I felt at hearing this news. It struck me directly she must have started for Penistone Crags. `What will become of her?’ I ejaculated, pushing through a gap which the man was repairing, and making straight to the high road. I walked as if for a wager, mile after mile, till a turn brought me in view of the Heights; but no Catherine could I detect far or near. The Crags lie about a mile and a half beyond Mr Heathcliff’s place, and that is four from the Grange, so I began to fear night would fall ere I could reach them. `And what if she should have slipped in clambering among them?’ I reflected, `and been killed, or broken some of her bones?’ My suspense was truly painful; and, at first, it gave me delightful relief to observe, in hurrying by the farmhouse, Charlie, the fiercest of the pointers, lying under a window, with swelled head and bleeding ear. I opened the wicket and ran to the door, knocking vehemently for admittance. A woman whom I knew, and who formerly lived at Gimmerton, answered: she had been servant there since the death of Mr Earnshaw.

`Ah,’ said she, `you are come a seeking your little mistress! don’t be frightened. She’s here safe: but I’m glad it isn’t the master.’

`He is not at home then, is he?’ I panted, quite breathless with quick walking and alarm.

`No, no,’ she replied: `both he and Joseph are off, and I think they won’t return this hour or more. Step in and rest you a bit.’

I entered, and beheld my stray lamb seated on skechers shoes the hearth, rocking herself in a little chair that had been her mother’s when a child. Her hat was hung against the wall, and she seemed perfectly at home, laughing and chattering, in the best spirits imaginable, to Hareton–now a great, strong lad of eighteen–who stared at her with considerable curiosity and astonishment: comprehending precious little of the fluent succession of remarks and questions which her tongue never ceased pouring forth.

`Very well, miss!’ I exclaimed, concealing my joy under an angry countenance. `This is your last ride, till papa comes back. I’ll not trust you over the threshold again, you naughty, naughty girl!’

`Aha, Ellen!’ she cried gaily, jumping up and running to my side. `I shall have a pretty story to tell tonight: and so you’ve found me out. Have you ever been here in your life before?’

`Put that hat on, and home at once,’ said I. `I’m dreadfully grieved at you, Miss Cathy: you’ve done extremely wrong. It’s no use pouting and crying: that won’t repay the trouble I’ve had, scouring the country after you. To think how Mr Linton charged me to keep you in; and you stealing off so! it shows you are a, cunning little fox, and nobody will put faith in you any more.

`What have I done?’ sobbed she, instantly checked. `Papa charged me nothing: he’ll not scold me, Ellen–he’s never cross, like you!’

`Come, come!’ I repeated. `I’ll tie the riband. Now, let us have no petulance. Oh, for shame! You thirteen years old, and such a baby!’

This exclamation was caused by her pushing the hat from her head, and retreating to the chimney out of my reach.

`Nay,’ said the servant, `don’t be hard on the bonny lass, Mrs Dean. We made her stop: she’d fain have ridden forwards, afeard you should be uneasy. But Hareton offered to go with her, and I thought he should: it’s a wild road over the hills.’

Hareton, during the discussion, stood with his hands in his pockets, too awkward to speak; though he looked as if he did not relish my intrusion.

`How long am I to wait?’ I continued, disregarding the woman’s interference. `It will be dark in ten minutes. Where is the pony, Miss Cathy? And where is Phoenix? I shall leave you, unless you be quick; so please yourself.’

`The pony is in the yard,’ she replied, `and Phoenix is shut in there. He’s bitten–and so is Charlie. I was going to tell you all about it; but you are in a bad temper, and don’t deserve to hear.’

I picked up her hat, and approached to reinstate it; but perceiving that the people of the house took her part, she commenced capering round the room; and on my giving chase, ran like a mouse over and under and behind the furniture, rendering it ridiculous for me to pursue. Hareton and the woman laughed, and she joined them, and waxed more impertinent still; till I cried, in great irritation:

`Well, Miss Cathy, if you were aware whose house this is, you’d be glad enough to get out.

`It’s your father’s, isn’t it?’ said she, turning to Hareton. `Nay,’ he replied, looking down, and blushing bashfully.

He could not stand a steady gaze from her eyes, though they were just his own.

`Whose then–your master’s?’ she asked.

He coloured deeper, with a different feeling, muttered an oath, and turned away.

`Who is his master?’ continued the tiresome girl, appealing to me. `He talked about “our house”, and “our folk”. I thought he had been the owner’s son. And he never said, Miss; he should have done, shouldn’t he, if he’s a servant?’

Hareton grew black as a thunder cloud, at this childish speech. I silently shook my questioner, and at last succeeded in equipping her for departure.

`Now, get my horse,’ she said, addressing her unknown kinsman as she would one of the stable-boys at the Grange. `And you may come with me. I want to see where the goblin-hunter rises in the marsh, and to hear about the fairishes, as you call them: but make haste! What’s the matter? Get my horse, I say.

`I’ll see thee damned before I be thy servant!’ growled the lad. `You’ll see me what?’ asked Catherine in surprise. `Damned–thou saucy witch!’ he replied.

`There, Miss Cathy! you see you have got into pretty company, I interposed. `Nice words to be used to a young lady! Pray don’t begin to dispute with him. Come, let us seek for Minny ourselves, and begone.’

`But, Ellen,’ cried she, staring, fixed in astonishment, `how dare he speak so to me? Mustn’t he be made to do as I ask him? You wicked creature, I shall tell papa what you said.–Now, then!’

Hareton did not appear to feel this threat; so the tears sprang into her eyes with indignation. `You bring the pony,’ she exclaimed, turning to the woman, `and let my dog free this moment!’

`Softly, miss,’ answered the addressed: `you’ll lose nothing by being civil. Though Mr Hareton, there, be not the master’s son, he’s your cousin; and I was never hired to serve you.’

`He my cousin!’ cried Cathy, with a scornful laugh. `Yes, indeed,’ responded her reprover.

`Oh, Ellen! don’t let them say such things,’ she pursued, in great trouble. `Papa is gone to fetch my cousin from London: my cousin is a gentleman’s son. That my’–she stopped, and wept outright; upset at the bare notion of relationship with such a clown.

`Hush, hush!’ I whispered, `people can have many cousins, and of all sorts, Miss Cathy, without being any the worse for it; only they needn’t keep their company, if they be disagreeable and bad.’

`He’s not–he’s not my cousin, Ellen!’ she went on, gathering fresh grief from reflection, and flinging herself into my arms for refuge from the idea.

I was much vexed at her and the servant for their mutual revelations; having no doubt of Linton’s approaching arrival, communicated by the former, being reported to Mr Heathcliff; and feeling as confident that Catherine’s first thought on her father’s return, would be to seek an explanation of the latter’s assertion concerning her rude-bred kindred. Hareton, recovering from his disgust at being taken for a servant, seemed moved by her distress; and, having fetched the pony round to the door, he took, to propitiate her, a fine crooked-legged terrier whelp from the kennel, and putting it into her hand bid her wisht! for he meant nought. Pausing in her lamentations, she surveyed him with a glance of awe and horror, then burst forth anew.

I could scarcely refrain from smiling at this antipathy to the poor fellow; who was a well-made, athletic youth, good-looking in features, and stout and healthy, but attired in garments befitting his daily occupations of working on the farm, and lounging among the moors after rabbits and game. Still, I thought I could detect in his physiognomy a mind owning better qualities than his father ever possessed. Good things lost amid a wilderness of weeds, to be sure, whose rankness far overtopped their neglected growth; yet, notwithstanding, evidence of a wealthy soil, that might yield luxuriant crops under other and favourable circumstances. Mr Heathcliff, I believe, had not treated him physically ill, thanks to his fearless nature, which offered no temptation to that course of oppression: it had none of the timid susceptibility that would have given zest to ill-treatment, in Heathcliff’s judgment. He appeared to have bent his malevolence on making him a brute: he was never taught to read or write; never rebuked for any bad habit which did not annoy his keeper; never led a single step towards virtue, or guarded by a single precept against vice. And from what I heard, Joseph contributed much to his deterioration, by a narrow-minded partiality which prompted him to flatter and pet him, as a boy, because he was the head of the old family. And as he had been in the habit of accusing Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, when children, of putting the master past his patience, and compelling him to seek solace in drink by what he termed their `offalld ways’, so at present he laid the whole burden of Hareton’s faults on the shoulders of the usurper of his property. If the lad swore, he wouldn’t correct him: nor however culpably he behaved. It gave Joseph satisfaction, apparently, to watch him go the worst lengths: he allowed that he was ruined: that his soul was abandoned to perdition; but then, he reflected that Heathcliff must answer for it. Hareton’s blood would be required at his hands; and there lay immense consolation in that thought. Joseph had instilled into him a pride of name, and of his lineage; he would, had he dared, have fostered hate between him and the present owner of the Heights: but his dread of that owner amounted to superstition; and he confined his feelings regarding him to muttered innuendoes and private comminations. I don’t pretend to be intimately acquainted with the mode of living customary in those days at Wuthering Heights: I only speak from hearsay; for I saw little. The villagers affirmed Mr Heathcliff was near, and a cruel hard landlord to his tenants; but the house, inside, had regained its ancient aspect of comfort under female management, and the scenes of riot common in Hindley’s time were not now enacted within its walls. The master was too gloomy to seek companionship with any people, good or bad; and he is yet.

This, however, is not making progress with my story. Miss Cathy rejected the peace offering of the terrier, and demanded her own dogs, Charlie and Phoenix. They came limping, and hanging their heads; and we set out for home, sadly out of sorts, every one of us. I could not wring from my little lady how she had spent the day; except that, as I supposed, the goal of her pilgrimage was Penistone Crags; and she arrived without adventure to the gate of the farmhouse, when Hareton happened to issue forth, attended by some canine followers, who attacked her train. They had a smart battle, before their owners could separate them: that ormed an introduction. Catherine told Hareton who she was, nd where she was going; and asked him to show her the way: finally, beguiling him to accompany her. He opened the mysteries of the Fairy Cave, and twenty other queer places. But, being in disgrace, I was not favoured with a description of the interesting objects she saw. I could gather, however, that her guide had been a favourite till she hurt his feelings by addressing him as a servant; and Heathcliffs housekeeper hurt hers by calling him her cousin. Then the language he had held to her rankled in her heart; she who was always `love’, and `darling’, and `queen’, and `angel’, with everybody at the Grange, to be insulted so shockingly by a stranger! She did not comprehend it; and hard work I had to obtain a promise that she would not lay the grievance before skechers shoe her father. I explained how he objected to the whole household at the Heights, and how sorry he would be to find she had been there; but I insisted most on the fact, that if she revealed my negligence of his orders, he would perhaps be so angry, that I should have to leave; and Cathy couldn’t bear that prospect: she pledged her word, and kept it, for my sake. After all, she was a sweet little girl.

That Friday made the last of our fine days for a month. In the evening, the weather broke: the wind shifted from south to northeast, and brought rain first, and then sleet and snow. On the morrow skechers brown boots one could hardly imagine that there had been three weeks of summer: the primroses and crocuses were hidden under wintry drifts; the larks were silent, the young leaves of the early trees smitten and blackened. And dreary, and chill, and dismal, that morrow did creep over! My master kept his room; I took possession of the lonely parlour, converting it into a nursery: and there I was, sitting with the moaning doll of a child laid on my knee; rocking it to and fro, and watching, meanwhile, the still driving flakes build up the uncurtained window, when the door opened, and some person entered, out of breath and laughing! My anger was greater than my astonishment for a minute. I supposed it one of the maids, and I cried–

`Have done! How dare you show your giddiness here? What would Mr Linton say if he heard you?’

`Excuse me!’ answered a familiar voice; `but I know Edgar is in bed, and I cannot stop myself.’

With that the speaker came forward to the fire, panting and holding her hand to her side.

`I have run the whole way from Wuthering Heights!’ she continued, after a pause; `except where I’ve flown. I couldn’t count the number of falls I’ve had. Oh, I’m aching all over! Don’t be alarmed! There shall be an explanation as soon as I can give it; only just have the goodness to step out and order the carriage to take me on to Gimmerton, and tell a servant to seek up a few clothes in my wardrobe.’

The intruder was Mrs Heathcliff. She certainly seemed in no laughing predicament: her hair streamed on her shoulders, dripping with snow and water; she was dressed in the girlish dress she commonly wore, befitting her age more than her position: a low frock with short sleeves, and nothing on either head or neck. The frock was of light silk, and clung to her with wet, and her feet were protected merely by thin slippers; add to this a deep cut under one ear, which only the cold prevented from bleeding profusely, a white face scratched and bruised, and a frame hardly able to support itself, through fatigue; and you may fancy my first fright was not much allayed when I had had leisure to examine her.

`My dear young lady,’ I exclaimed, `I’ll stir nowhere, and hear nothing, till you have removed every article of your clothes, and put on dry things; and certainly you shall not go to Gimmerton tonight, so it is needless to order the carriage.’

`Certainly, I shall,’ she said; `walking or riding: yet I’ve no objection to dress myself decently. And–ah, see how it flows down my neck now! The fire does make it smart.’

She insisted on my fulfilling her directions, before she would let me touch her; and not till after the coachman had been instructed to get ready, and a maid set to pack up some necessary attire, did I obtain her consent for binding the wound and helping to change her garments.

`Now, Ellen,’ she said, when my task was finished and she was seated in an easy chair on the hearth, with a cup of tea before her, you sit down opposite me, and put poor Catherine’s baby away: I don’t like to see it! You mustn’t think I care little for Catherine, because I behaved so foolishly on entering: I’ve cried, too, bitterly–yes, more than anyone else has reason to cry. We parted unreconciled, you remember, and I shan’t forgive myself. But, for all that, I was not going to sympathize with him–the brute beast! Oh, give me the poker! This is the last thing of his I have about me.’ She slipped the gold ring from her third finger, and threw it on the floor. `I’ll smash it!’ she continued, striking it with childish spite, `and then I’ll burn it!’ and she took and dropped the misused article among the coals. `There! he shall buy another, if he gets me back again. He’d be capable of coming to seek me, to tease Edgar. I dare not stay, lest that notion should possess his wicked head! And besides, Edgar has not been kind, has he? And I won’t come suing for his assistance; nor will I bring him into more trouble. Necessity compelled me to seek shelter here; though, if I had not learned he was out of the way, I’d have halted at the kitchen, washed my face, warmed myself, got you to bring what I wanted, and departed again to anywhere out of the reach of my accursed–of that incarnate goblin! Ah! he was in such a fury! If he had caught me! It’s a pity Earnshaw is not his match in strength: I wouldn’t have run till I’d seen him all but demolished, had Hindley been able to do it!’

`Well, don’t talk so fast, miss!’ I interrupted; `you’ll disorder the handkerchief I have tied round your face, and make the cut bleed again. Drink your tea, and take breath, and give over laughing: laughter is sadly out of place under this roof, and in your condition!’

`An undeniable truth,’ she replied. `Listen to that child! It maintains a constant wail–send it out of my hearing for an hour; I shan’t stay any longer.’

I rang the bell, and committed it to a servant’s care; and then I inquired what had urged her to escape from Wuthering Heights in such an unlikely plight, and where she meant to go, as she refused remaining with us.

`I ought, and I wish to remain,’ answered she, `to cheer Edgar and take care of the baby, for two things, and because the Grange is my right home. But I Bell you he wouldn’t let me! Do you think he could bear to see me grow fat and merry; and could bear to think that we were tranquil, and not resolve on poisoning our comfort? Now, I have the satisfaction of being sure that he detests me, to the point of its annoying him seriously to have me within earshot or eyesight: I notice, when I enter his presence, the muscles of his countenance are involuntarily distorted into an expression of hatred; partly arising from his knowledge of the good causes I have to feel that sentiment for him, and partly from original aversion. It is strong enough to make me feel pretty certain that he would not chase me over England, supposing I contrived a clear escape; and therefore I must get quite away. I’ve recovered from my first desire to be killed by him: I’d rather he’d kill himself! He has extinguished my love effectually, and so I’m at my ease. I can recollect yet how I loved him; and can dimly imagine that I could still be loving him, if–no, no! Even if he had doted on me, the devilish nature would have revealed its existence somehow. Catherine had an awfully perverted taste to esteem him so dearly, knowing him so well. Monster! would that he could be blotted out of creation, and out of my memory!’

`Hush, hush! He’s a human being,’ I said. `Be more charitable: there are worse men than he is yet!’

`He’s not a human being,’ she retorted; `and he has no claim on my charity. I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death, and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen: and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him: and I would not, though he groaned from this to his dying day, and wept tears of blood for Catherine! No, indeed, indeed, I wouldn’t!’ And here Isabella began to cry; but, immediately dashing the water from her lashes, she recommenced. `You asked, what has driven me to flight at last? I was compelled to attempt it, because I had succeeded in rousing his rage a pitch above his malignity. Pulling out the nerves with red-hot pincers requires more coolness than knocking on the head. He was worked up to forget the fiendish prudence he boasted of, and proceeded to murderous violence. I experienced pleasure in being able to exasperate him; the sense of pleasure woke my instinct of self-preservation, so I fairly broke free; and if ever I come into his hands again he is welcome to a signal revenge.

`Yesterday, you know, Mr Earnshaw should have been at the funeral. He kept himself sober for the purpose–tolerably sober: not going to bed mad at six o’clock and getting up drunk at twelve. Consequently he rose, in suicidal low spirits, as fit for the church as for a dance; and instead, he sat down by the fire and swallowed gin or brandy by tumblerfuls.

`Heathcliff–I shudder to name him! has been a stranger in the house from last Sunday till today. Whether the angels have fed him, or his kin beneath, I cannot tell; but he has not eaten a meal with us for nearly a week. He has just come home at dawn, and gone upstairs to his chamber; locking himself in–as if anybody dreamt of coveting his company! There he has continued, praying like a Methodist: only the deity he implored in senseless dust and ashes; and God, when addressed, was curiously confounded with his own black father! After concluding these precious orisons–and they lasted generally till he grew hoarse and his voice was strangled in his throat–he would be off again; always straight down to the Grange! I-wonder Edgar did not send for a constable, and give him into custody! For me, grieved as I was about Catherine, it was impossible to avoid regarding this season of deliverance from degrading oppression as a holiday.

`I recovered spirits sufficient to hear Joseph’s eternal lectures without weeping, and to move up and down the house less with the foot of a frightened thief than formerly. You wouldn’t think that I should cry at anything Joseph could say; but he and Hareton are detestable companions. I’d rather sit with Hindley, and hear his awful talk, than with “t’ little maister” and his staunch supporter, that odious old man! When Heathcliff is in, I’m often obliged to seek the kitchen and their society, or starve among the damp uninhabited chambers; when he is not, as was the case this week, I establish a table and chair at one comer of the house fire, and never mind how Mr Earnshaw may occupy himself; and he does not interfere with my arrangements. He is quieter now than he used to be, if no one provokes him: more sullen and depressed, and less furious. Joseph affirms he’s sure he’s an altered man: that the Lord has touched his heart, and he is saved “so as by fire”. I’m puzzled to detect signs of the favourable change: but it is not my business.

`Yester-evening I sat in my nook reading some old books till late on towards twelve. It seemed so dismal to go upstairs, with the wild snow blowing outside, and my thoughts continually reverting to the kirkyard and the new-made grave! I dared hardly lift my eyes from the page before me, that melancholy scene so instantly usurped its place. Hindley sat opposite, his head leant on his hand; perhaps meditating on the same subject. He had ceased drinking at a point below irrationality, and had neither stirred nor spoken during two or three hours. There was no sound through the house but the moaning wind, which shook the windows skechers brown shoes every now and then, the faint crackling of the coals, and the click of my snuffers as I removed at intervals the long wick of the candle. Hareton and Joseph were probably fast asleep in bed. It was very, very sad: and while I read I sighed, for it seemed as if all joy had vanished from the world, never to be restored.

`The doleful silence was broken at length by the sound of the kitchen latch: Heathcliff had returned from his watch earlier than usual; owing, I suppose, to the sudden storm. That entrance was fastened, and we beard him coming round to get in by the other. I rose with an irrepressible expression of what I felt on my lips, which induced my companion, who had been staring towards the door, to turn and look at me.

“I’Il keep him out five minutes,” he exclaimed. “You won’t object?”

`”No, you may keep him out the whole night for me,” I answered. “Do! put the key in the lock, and draw the bolts.”

`Earnshaw accomplished this ere his guest reached the front; he then came and brought his chair to the other side of my table, leaning over it, and searching in my eyes, a sympathy with the burning hate that gleamed from his: as he both looked and felt like an assassin, he couldn’t exactly find that; but he discovered enough to encourage him to speak.

`”You and I”, he said, “have each a great debt to settle with the man out yonder! If we were neither of us cowards, we might combine to discharge it. Are you as soft as your brother? Are you willing to endure to the last, and not once attempt a repayment?”

“I’m weary of enduring now,” I replied; “and I’d be glad of a retaliation that wouldn’t recoil on myself; but treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends: they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.”

“Treachery and violence are a just return for treachery and violence!” cried Hindley. “Mrs Heathcliff, I’ll ask you to do nothing; but sit still and be dumb. Tell me now, can you? I’m sure you would have as much pleasure as I in witnessing the conclusion of the fiend’s existence; he’ll be your death unless you overreach him; and he’ll be my ruin. Damn the hellish villain! He knocks at the door as if he were master here already! Promise to hold your tongue, and before that clock strikes–it wants three minutes of one–you’re a free woman!”

`He took the implements which I described to you in my letter from his breast, and would have turned down the candle. I snatched it away, however, and seized his arm.

` “I’Il not hold my tongue!” I said; “you mustn’t touch him. Let the door remain shut, and be quiet!”

` “No! I’ve formed my resolution, and by God I’ll execute it!” cried the desperate being. “I’Il do you a kindness in spite of yourself, and Hareton justice! And you needn’t trouble your head to screen me; Catherine is gone. Nobody alive would regret me, or be ashamed, though I cut my throat this minute–and it’s time to make an end!”

`I might as well have struggled with a bear, or reasoned with a lunatic. The only resource left me was to run to a lattice and warn his intended victim of the fate which awaited him.

`”You’d better seek shelter somewhere else tonight!” I exclaimed in a rather triumphant tone. “Mr Earnshaw has a mind to shoot you, if you persist in endeavouring to enter.”

“You’d better open the door, you–”he answered, addressing me by some elegant term that I don’t care to repeat.

“I shall not meddle in the matter,” I retorted again. “Come in and get shot, if you please! I’ve done my duty.”

`With that I shut the window and returned to my place by the fire; having too small a stock of hypocrisy at my command to pretend any anxiety for the danger that menaced him. Earnshaw swore passionately at me: affirming that I loved the villain yet; and calling me all sorts of names for the base spirit I evinced. And I, in my secret heart (and conscience never reproached me), thought what a blessing it would be for him should Heathcliff put him out of misery; and what a blessing for me should he send Heathcliff to his right abode! As I sat nursing these reflections, the casement behind me was banged on to the floor by a blow from the latter individual, and his black countenance liked blightingly through. The stanchions stood too close to suffer his shoulders to follow, and I smiled, exulting in my fancied security. His hair and clothes were whitened with snow, and his sharp cannibal teeth, revealed by cold and wrath, gleamed through the dark.

`”Isabella, let me in, or I’ll make you repent!” he “girned”, as Joseph calls it.

I cannot commit murder,” I replied. “Mr Hindley stands sentinel with a knife and loaded pistol.”

“Let me in by the kitchen door,” he said.

“Hindley will be there before you,” I answered: “and that’s a poor love of yours that cannot bear a shower of snow! We were left at peace on our beds as long as the summer moon shone, but the moment a blast of winter returns, you must run for shelter! Heathcliff, if I were you, I’d go stretch myself over her grave and die like a faithful dog. The world is surely not worth living in now, is it? You had distinctly impressed on me the idea that Catherine was the whole joy of your life: I can’t imagine how you think of surviving her loss.”

“He’s there, is he?” exclaimed my companion, rushing to the gap. “If I can get my arm out I can hit him!”

`I’m afraid, Ellen, you’ll set me down as really wicked; but you don’t know all, so don’t judge. I wouldn’t have aided or abetted an attempt on even his life for anything. Wish that he were dead, I must; and therefore I was fearfully disappointed, and unnerved by terror for the consequences of my taunting speech, when he flung himself on Earnshaw’s weapon and wrenched it from his grasp.

`The charge,exploded, and the knife, in springing back, closed into its owners wrist. Heathcliff pulled it away by main force, slitting up the flesh as it passed on, and thrust it dripping into his pocket. He then took a stone, struck down the division between two windows, and sprang in. His adversary had fallen senseless with excessive pain and the flow of blood, that gushed from an artery or a large vein. The ruffian kicked and trampled on him, and dashed his head repeatedly against the flags, holding me with one hand, meantime, to prevent me summoning Joseph. He exerted preterhuman self-denial in abstaining from finishing him completely; but getting out of breath he finally desisted, and dragged the apparently inanimate body on to the settle. There he tore off the sleeve of Earnshaw’s coat, and bound up the wound with brutal roughness; spitting and cursing during the operation as energetically as he had kicked before. Being at liberty, I lost no time in seeking the old servant; who, having gathered by degrees the purport of my hasty tale, hurried below, gasping, as he descended the steps two at once.

“What is there to do, now? what is there to do, now?”

`”There’s this to do,” thundered Heathcliff, “that your master’s mad; and should he last another month, I’ll have him to an asylum. And how the devil did you come to fasten me out, you toothless hound? Don’t stand muttering and mumbling there. Come, I’m not going to nurse him. Wash that stuff away; and mind the sparks of your candle–it is more than half brandy!”

`”And so, ye’ve been murthering on him?” exclaimed Joseph, lifting his hands and eyes in horror. “If iver I seed a seeght loike this! May the Lord– -”

`Heathcliff gave him a push on to his knees in the middle of the blood, and flung a towel to him; but instead of proceeding to dry it up, he joined his hands and began a prayer, which excited my laughter from its odd phraseology. I was in the condition of mind to be shocked at nothing: in fact, I was as reckless as some malefactors show themselves at the foot of the gallows.

`”Oh, I forgot you,” said the tyrant. “You shall do that. Down with you. And you conspire with him against me, do you, viper? There, that is work fit for you!”

`He shook me till my teeth rattled, and pitched me beside Joseph, who steadily concluded his supplications and then rose, vowing he would set off for the Grange directly. Mr Linton was a magistrate, and though he had fifty wives dead, he should inquire into this. He was so obstinate in his resolution, that Heathcliff deemed it expedient to compel from my lips a recapitulation of what had taken place; standing over me, heaving with malevolence, as I reluctantly delivered the account in answer to his questions. It required a great deal of labour to satisfy the old man that Heathcliff was not the aggressor; especially with my hardly wrung replies. However, Mr Earnshaw soon convinced him that he was alive still; Joseph hastened to administer a dose of spirits, and by their succour his master presently regained motion and consciousness. Heathcliff, aware that his opponent was ignorant of the treatment received while insensible, called him deliriously intoxicated; and said he should not notice his atrocious conduct further, but advised him to get to bed. To my joy, he left us, after giving this judicious counsel, and Hindley stretched himself on the hearthstone. I departed to my own room, marvelling that I had escaped so easily.

`This morning, when I came down, about half an hour before noon, Mr Earnshaw was sitting by the fire, deadly sick; his evil genius, almost as gaunt and ghastly, leant against the chimney. Neither appeared inclined to dine, and, having waited till all was cold on the table, I commenced alone. Nothing hindered me from eating heartily, and I experienced a certain sense of satisfaction and superiority, as, at intervals, I cast a look towards my silent companions, and felt the comfort of a quiet conscience within me. After I had done, I ventured on the unusual liberty of drawing near the fire, going round Earnshaw’s seat, and kneeling in the corner beside him.

`Heathcliff did not glance my way, and I gazed up, and contemplated his features almost as confidently as if they had been turned to stone. His forehead, that I once thought so manly, and that I now think so diabolical, was shaded with a heavy cloud; his basilisk eyes were nearly quenched by sleeplessness, and weeping, perhaps, for the lashes were wet then; his lips devoid of their ferocious sneer, and sealed in an expression of unspeakable sadness. Had it been another, I would have covered my face in the presence of such grief. In his case, I was gratified; and, ignoble as it seems to insult a fallen enemy, I couldn’t miss this chance of sticking in a dart: his weakness was the only time when I could taste the delight of paying wrong for wrong.

`Fie, fie, miss!’ I interrupted. `One might suppose you had never opened a Bible in your life. If God afflict your enemies, surely that ought to suffice you. It is both mean and presumptuous to add your torture to His!’

`In general I’ll allow that it would be, Ellen,’ she continued; `but what misery laid on Heathcliff could content me, unless I have a hand in it? I’d rather he suffered less, if I might cause his sufferings and he might know that I was the cause. O, I owe him so much. On only one condition can I hope to forgive him. It is, if I may take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; for every wrench of agony return a wrench: reduce him to my level. As he was the first to injure, make him the first to implore pardon; and then–why then, Ellen, I might show you some generosity. But it is utterly impossible I can ever be revenged, and therefore I cannot forgive him. Hindley wanted some water, and I handed him a glass, and asked him how he was.

“Not as ill as I wish,” he replied. “But leaving out my arm, every inch of me is as sore as if I had been fighting with a legion of imps!”

`”Yes, no wonder,” was my next remark. “Catherine used to boast that she stood between you and bodily harm: she meant that certain persons would not hurt you for fear of offending her. It’s well people don’t really rise from their grave, or, last night, she might have witnessed a repulsive scene! Are not you bruised and cut over your chest and shoulders?”

“I can’t say,” he answered: “but what do you mean? Did he dare to strike me when I was down?”

“He trampled on you and kicked you, and dashed you on the ground,” I whispered. “And his mouth watered to tear you with his teeth; because he’s only half a man–not so much.”

`Mr Earnshaw looked up, like me, to the countenance of our mutual foe; who, absorbed in his anguish, seemed insensible to anything around him: the longer he stood, the plainer his reflections revealed their blackness through his features.

`”Oh, if God would but give me strength to strangle him in my last agony, I’d go to hell with joy,” groaned the impatient man, writhing to rise, and sinking back in despair, convinced of his inadequacy for the struggle.

`”Nay, it’s enough that he has murdered one of you,” I observed aloud. “At the Grange, everyone knows your sister would have been living now, had it not been for Mr Heathcliff. After all, it is preferable to be hated than loved by him. When I recollect how happy we were–how happy Catherine was before he came–I’m fit to curse the day.”

`Most likely, Heathcliff noticed more the truth of what was said, than the spirit of the person who said it. His attention was roused, I saw, for his eyes rained down tears among the ashes, and he drew his breath in suffocating sighs. I stared full at him, and laughed scornfully. The clouded windows of hell flashed a moment towards me; the fiend which usually looked out, however, was so dimmed and drowned that I did not fear to hazard another sound of derision.

“Get up, and begone out of my sight,” said the mourner.

`I guessed he uttered those words, at least, though his voice was hardly intelligible.

`”I beg your pardon,” I replied. “But I loved Catherine too; and her brother requires attendance, which, for her sake, I shall supply. Now that she’s dead, I see her in Hindley: Hindley has exactly her eyes, if you had not tried to gouge them out, and made them black and red; and her–”

“Get up, wretched idiot, before I stamp you to death!” he cried, making a movement that caused me to make one also.

“But then,” I continued, holding myself ready to flee; “if poor Catherine had trusted you, and assumed the ridiculous, contemptible, degrading title of Mrs Heathcliff, she would soon have presented a similar picture! She wouldn’t have borne your abominable behaviour quietly: her detestation and disgust must have found voice.”

`The back of the settle and Earnshaw’s person interposed between me and him: so instead of endeavouring to reach me, he snatched a dinner knife from the table and flung it at my head. It struck beneath my ear, and stopped the sentence I was uttering; but, pulling it out, I sprang to the door and delivered another; which I hope went a little deeper than his missile. The last glimpse I caught of him was a furious rush on his part, checked by the embrace of his host; and both fell locked together on the hearth. In my flight through the kitchen I bid Joseph speed to his master; I knocked over Hareton, who was hanging a litter of puppies from a chair back in the doorway; and, blest as a soul escaped from purgatory, I bounded, leaped, and flew down the steep road; then, quitting its windings, shot direct across the moor, rolling over banks, and wading through marshes: precipitating myself, in fact, towards the beacon light of the Grange. And far rather would I be condemned to a perpetual dwelling in the infernal regions, than, even for one night, abide beneath the roof of Wuthering Heights again.’

Isabella ceased speaking, and took a drink of tea; then she rose, and bidding me put on her bonnet, and a great shawl I had brought, and turning a deaf ear to my entreaties for her to remain another hour, she stepped on to a chair, kissed Edgar’s and Catherine’s portraits, bestowed a similar salute on me, and descended to the carriage, accompanied by Fanny, who yelped wild with joy at recovering her mistress. She was driven away, never to revisit the neighbourhood: but a regular correspondence was established between her and my master when things were more settled. I believe her new abode was in the south, near London; there she had a son born, a few months subsequent to her escape. He was christened Linton, and, from the first, she reported him to be an ailing, peevish creature.

Mr Heathcliff, meeting me one day in the village, inquired where she lived. I refused to tell. He remarked that it was not of any moment, only she must beware of coming to her brother: she should not be with him, if he had to keep her himself. Though I would give no information, he discovered, through some of the other servants, both her place of residence and the existence of the child. Still he didn’t molest her: for which forbearance she might thank his aversion, I suppose. He often asked about the infant, when he saw me; and on hearing its name, smiled grimly, and observed:

`They wish me to hate it too, do they?’

`I don’t think they wish you to know anything about it,’ I answered.

`But I’ll have it,’ he said, `when I want it. They may reckon on that!’

Fortunately, its mother died before the time arrived; some thirteen years after the decease of Catherine, when Linton was twelve, or a little more.

On the day succeeding Isabella’s unexpected visit, I had no opportunity of speaking to my master: he shunned conversation, and was fit for discussing nothing. When I could get him to listen, I saw it pleased him that his sister had left her husband; whom he abhorred with an intensity which the mildness of his nature would scarcely seem to allow. So deep and sensitive was his aversion, that he refrained from going anywhere where he was likely to see or hear of Heathcliff. Grief, and that together, transformed him into a complete hermit: he threw up his office of magistrate, ceased even to attend church, avoided the village on all occasions, and spent a life of entire seclusion within the limits of his park and grounds; only varied by solitary rambles on the moors, and visits to the grave of his wife, mostly at evening, or early morning before other wanderers were abroad. But he was too good to be thoroughly unhappy long. He didn’t pray for Catherine’s soul to haunt him. Time brought resignation, and a melancholy sweeter than common joy. He recalled her memory with ardent, tender love, and hopeful aspiring to the better world; where he doubted not she was gone.

And he had earthly consolation and affections also. For a few days, I said, he seemed regardless of the puny successor to the departed: the coldness melted as fast as snow in April, and ere the tiny thing could stammer a word or totter a step, it wielded a despot’s sceptre in his heart. It was named Catherine; but he never called it the name in full, as he had never called the first Catherine short; probably because Heathcliff had a habit of doing so. The little one was always Cathy; it formed to him a distinction from the mother, and yet a connection with her; and his attachment sprang from its relation to her, far more than from its being his own.

I used to draw a comparison between him and Hindley Earnshaw, and perplex myself to explain satisfactorily why their conduct was so opposite in similar circumstances. They had both been fond husbands, and were both attached to their children; and I could not see how they shouldn’t both have taken the same road, for good or evil. But, I thought in my mind, Hindley, with apparently the stronger head, has shown himself sadly the worse and the weaker man. When his ship struck, the captain abandoned his post; and the crew, instead of trying to save her, rushed into riot and confusion, leaving no hope for their luckless vessel. Linton, on the contrary, displayed the true courage of a loyal and faithful soul: he trusted God; and God comforted him. One hoped, and the other despaired: they chose their own lots, and were righteously doomed to endure them. But you’ll not want to hear my moralizing, Mr Lockwood: you’ll judge as well as I can, all these things: at least, you’ll think you will, and that’s the same. The end of Earnshaw was what might have been expected; it followed fast on his sister’s: there was scarcely six months between them. We, at the Grange, never got a very succinct account of his state preceding it; all that I did learn, was on occasion of going to aid in the preparations for the funeral. Mr Kenneth came to announce the event to my master.

`Well, Nelly,’ said he, riding into the yard one morning, too early not to alarm me with an instant presentiment of bad news, `it’s yours and my turn to go into mourning at present. Who’s given us the slip now, do you think?’

`Who?’ I asked in a flurry.

`Why, guess!’ he returned, dismounting, and slinging his bridle on a hook by the door. `And nip up the corner of your apron: I’m certain you’ll need it.’

`Not Mr Heathcliff, surely?’ I exclaimed.

`What! would you have tears for him?’ said the doctor. `No, Heathcliff’s a tough young fellow: he looks blooming today. I’ve just seen him. He’s rapidly regaining flesh since he lost his better half.’

`Who is it then, Mr Kenneth?’ I repeated impatiently.

`Hindley Earnshaw! Your old friend Hindley,’ he replied, `and my wicked gossip: though he’s been too wild for me this long while. There! I said we should draw water. But cheer up. He died true to his character: drunk as a lord. Poor lad! I’m sorry, too. One can’t help missing an old companion: though he had the worst tricks with him that ever man imagined, and has done me many a rascally turn. He’s barely twenty-seven, it seems; that’s your own age: who would have thought you were born in one year?’

I confess this blow was greater to me than the shock of Mrs Linton’s death: ancient associations lingered round my heart; I sat down in the porch and wept as for a blood relation, desiring Kenneth to get another servant to introduce him to the master. I could not hinder myself from pondering on the question–`Had he had fair play?’ Whatever I did, that idea would bother me: it was so tiresomely pertinacious that I resolved on requesting leave to go to Wuthering Heights, and assist in the last duties to the dead. Mr Linton was extremely reluctant to consent, but I pleaded eloquently for the friendless condition in which he lay; and I said my old master and foster-brother had a claim on my services as strong as his own. Besides, I reminded him that the child Hareton was his wife’s nephew, and, in the absence of nearer kin, he ought to act as its guardian; and he ought to and must inquire how the property was left, and look over the concerns of his brother-in-law. He was unfit for attending to such matters then, but he bid me speak to his lawyer; and at length permitted me to go. His lawyer had been Earnshaw’s also: I called at the village, and asked him to accompany me. He shook his head, and advised that Heathcliff should be let alone; affirming, if the truth were known, Hareton would be found little else than a beggar.

`His father died in debt,’ he said; `the whole property is mortgaged, and the sole chance for the natural heir is to allow him an opportunity of creating some interest in the creditor’s heart, that he may be inclined to deal leniently towards him.’

When I reached the Heights, I explained that I had come to see everything carried on decently; and Joseph, who appeared in sufficient distress, expressed satisfaction at my presence. Mr Heathcliff said he did not perceive that I was wanted; but I might stay and order the arrangements for the funeral, if I chose.

`Correctly,’ he remarked, `that fool’s body should be buried at the crossroads, without ceremony of any kind. I happened to leave him ten minutes yesterday afternoon, and in that interval he fastened the two doors of the house against me, and he has spent the night in drinking himself to death deliberately! We broke in this morning, for we heard him snorting like a horse; and there he was, laid over the settle; flaying and scalping would not have wakened him. I sent for Kenneth, and he came; but not till the beast had changed into carrion: he was both dead and cold, and stark; and so you’ll allow it was useless making more stir about him!’

The old servant confirmed this statement, but muttered:

`Aw’d rayther he’d goan hisseln fur t’ doctor! Aw sud uh taen tent uh t’ maister better nur him–un he warn’t deead when Aw left, nowt uh t’ soart!’

I insisted on the funeral being respectable. Mr Heathcliff said I might have my own way there too; only, he desired me to remember that the money for the whole affair came out of his pocket. He maintained a hard, careless deportment, indicative of neither joy nor sorrow; if anything, it expressed a flinty gratification at a piece of difficult work successfully executed. I observed once, indeed, something like exultation in his aspect: it was just when the people were bearing the coffin from the house. He had the hypocrisy to represent a mourner: and previous to following with Hareton, he lifted the unfortunate child on to the table and muttered, with peculiar gusto, `Now, my bonny lad, you are mine! And we’ll see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!’ The unsuspecting thing was pleased at this speech: he played with Heathcliff’s whiskers, and stroked his cheek; but I divined its meaning, and observed tartly, `That boy must go back with me to Thrushcross Grange, sir. There is nothing in the world less yours than he is!’

`Does Linton say so?’ he demanded.

`Of course–he has ordered me to take him,’ I replied.

`Well,’ said the scoundrel, `we’ll not argue the subject now: but I have a fancy to try my hand at rearing a young one; so intimate to your master that I must supply the place of this with my own, if he attempt to remove it. I don’t engage to let Hareton go undisputed; but I’ll be pretty sure to make the other come! Remember to tell him.’

This hint was enough to bind our hands. I repeated its substance on my return; and Edgar Linton, little interested at the commencement, spoke no more of interfering I’m not aware that he could have done it to any purpose, had he been ever so willing.

The guest was now the master of Wuthering Heights: he held firm possession, and proved to the attorney–who, in his turn, proved it to Mr Linton–that Earnshaw had mortgaged every yard of land he owned, for cash to supply his mania for gaming; and he, Heathcliff, skechers brown was the mortgagee. In that manner Hareton, who should now be the first gentleman in the neighbourhood, was reduced to a state of complete dependence on his father’s inveterate enemy; and lives in his own house as a servant, deprived of the advantage of wages, and quite unable to right himself, because of his friendlessness, and his ignorance that he has been wronged.

About twelve o’clock that night, was born the Catherine you saw at Wuthering Heights: a puny, seven months’ child; and two hours skechers boots women after the mother died, having never recovered sufficient consciousness to miss Heathcliff, or know Edgar. The latter’s distraction at his bereavement is a subject too painful to be dwelt on; its after effects showed how deep the sorrow sunk. A great addition, in my eyes, was his being left without an heir. I bemoaned that, as I gazed on the feeble orphan; and I mentally abused old Linton for (what was only natural partiality) the securing his estate to his own daughter, instead of his son’s. An unwelcomed infant it was, poor thing! It might have wailed out of life, and nobody cared a morsel, during those first hours of existence. We redeemed the neglect afterwards; but its beginning was as friendless as its end is likely to be.

Next morning–bright and cheerful out of doors–stole softened in through the blinds of the silent room, and suffused the couch and its occupant with a mellow, tender glow. Edgar Linton had his head laid on the pillow, and his eyes shut. His young and fair features were almost as deathlike as those of the form beside him, and almost as fixed: but his was the hush of exhausted anguish, and hers of perfect peace. Her brow smooth, her lids closed, her lips wearing the expression of a smile; no angel in heaven could be more beautiful than she appeared. And I partook of the infinite calm in which she lay: my mind was never in a holier frame than while I gazed on that untroubled image of divine rest. I instinctively echoed the words she had uttered a few hours before: `Incomparably beyond and above us all! Whether still on earth or now in heaven, her spirit is at home with God!’

I don’t know if it be a peculiarity in me, but I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, should no frenzied or despairing mourner share the duty with me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter–the Eternity they have entered–where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness. I noticed on that occasion how much selfishness there is even in a love like Mr Linton’s, when he so regretted Catherine’s blessed release! To be sure, one might have doubted, after the wayward and impatient existence she had led, whether she merited a haven of peace at last. One might doubt in seasons of cold reflection; but not then, in the presence of her corpse. It asserted its own tranquillity, which seemed a pledge of equal quiet to its former inhabitant.

Do you believe such people are happy in the other world, sir? I’d give a great deal to know.

I declined answering Mrs Dean’s question, which struck me as something heterodox. She proceeded–

Retracing the course of Catherine Linton, I fear we have no right to think she is; but we’ll leave her with her Maker.

The master looked asleep, and I ventured soon after sunrise to quit the room and steal out to the pure refreshing air. The servants thought me gone to shake off the drowsiness of my protracted watch; in reality, my chief motive was seeing Mr Heathcliff. If he had remained among the larches all night, he would have heard nothing of the stir at the Grange; unless, perhaps, he might catch the gallop of the messenger going to Gimmerton. If he had come nearer, he would probably be aware, from the lights flitting to and fro, and the opening and shutting of the outer doors, that all was not right within. I wished, yet feared, to find him. I felt the terrible news must be told, and I longed to get it over; but how to do it, I did not know. He was there–at least a few yards farther in the park; leant against an old ash tree, his hat off, and his hair soaked with the dew that had gathered on the budded branches, and fell pattering round him. He had been standing a long time in that position, for I saw a pair of ousels passing and repassing scarcely three feet from him, busy in building their nest, and regarding his proximity no more than that of a piece of timber. They flew off at my approach, and he raised his eyes and spoke–

`She’s dead!’ he said; `I’ve not waited for you to learn that. Put your handkerchief away–don’t snivel before me. Damn you all! she wants none of your tears!’

I was weeping as much for him as her; we do sometimes pity creatures that have none of the feeling either for themselves or others; and when I first looked into his face, I perceived that he had got intelligence of the catastrophe; and a foolish notion struck me that his heart was quelled and he prayed, because his lips moved and his gaze was bent on the ground.

`Yes, she’s dead!’ I answered, checking my sobs and drying my cheeks. `Gone to heaven, I hope; where we may, everyone, join her, if we take due warning and leave our evil ways to follow good!’

`Did she take due warning,then?’ asked women’s skechers boots Heathcliff, attempting a sneer. `Did she die like a saint? Come, give me a true history of the event. How did–’

He endeavoured to pronounce the name, but could not manage it; and compressing his mouth he held a silent combat with his inward agony, defying, meanwhile, my sympathy with an unflinching ferocious stare. `How did she die?’ he resumed at last–fain, notwithstanding his hardihood, to have a support behind him; for, after the struggle, he trembled, in spite of himself, to his very finger-ends.

`Poor wretch!’ I thought; `you have a heart and nerves the same as your brother men! Why should you be anxious to conceal them? Your pride cannot blind God! You tempt Him to wring them, till He forces a cry of humiliation.

`Quietly as a lamb!’ I answered aloud. `She drew a sigh, and stretched herself, like a child reviving, and sinking again to sleep; and five minutes after I felt one little pulse at her heart, and nothing more!’

`And–did she ever mention me?’ he asked, hesitating, as if he dreaded the answer to his question would introduce details that he could not bear to hear.

`Her senses never returned; she recognized nobody from the time you left her,’ I said. `She lies with a sweet smile on her face; and her latest ideas wandered back to pleasant early days. Her life closed in a gentle dream–may she wake as kindly in the other world!’

`May she wake in torment!’ he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. `Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there–not in heaven–not perished–where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer–I repeat it till my tongue stiffens–Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you–haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!’

He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and, lifting up his eyes, howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast getting goaded to death with knives and spears. I observed several splashes of blood about the bark of the tree, and his hand and forehead were both stained; probably the scene I witnessed was a repetition of others acted during the night. It hardly moved my compassion–it appalled me: still, I felt reluctant to quit him so. But the moment he recollected himself enough to notice me watching, he thundered a command for me to go, and I obeyed. He was beyond my skill to quiet or console!

Mrs Linton’s funeral was appointed to take place on the Friday following her decease; and till then her coffin remained uncovered, and strewn with flowers and scented leaves, in the great drawing-room. Linton spent his days and nights there, a sleepless guardian; and–a circumstance concealed from all but me–Heathcliff spent his nights, at least, outside, equally a stranger to repose. I held no communication with him; still, I was conscious of his design to enter, if he could; and on the Tuesday, a little after dark, when my master, from sheer fatigue, had been compelled to retire a couple of hours, I went and opened one of the windows; moved by his perseverance, to give him a chance of bestowing on the faded image of his idol one final adieu. He did not omit to avail himself of the opportunity, cautiously and briefly: too cautiously to betray his presence by the slightest noise. Indeed, I shouldn’t have discovered that he had been there, except for the disarrangement of the drapery about the corpse’s face, and for observing on the floor a curl of light hair, fastened with a silver thread; which, on examination, I ascertained to have been taken from a locket hung round Catherine’s neck. Heathcliff had opened the trinket and cast out its contents, replacing them by a black lock of his own. I twisted the two, and enclosed them together.

Mr Earnshaw was, of course, invited to attend the remains of his sister to the grave; and he sent no excuse, but he never came; so that, besides her husband, the mourners were wholly composed of tenants and servants. Isabella was not asked.

The place of Catherine’s interment, to the surprise of the villagers, was neither in the chapel under the carved monument skechers boots of the Lintons, nor yet by the tombs of her own relations, outside. It was dug on a green slope in a corner of the kirkyard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry plants have climbed over it from the moor; and peat mould almost buries it. Her husband lies in the same spot now; and they have each a simple headstone above, and a plain grey block at their feet, to mark the graves.

A SPLENDID Midsummer shone over England: skies so pure, suns so radiant as were then seen in long succession, seldom favour even singly, our wave-girt land. It was as if a band of Italian days dunk sb high had come from the South, like a flock of glorious passenger birds, and lighted to rest them on the cliffs of Albion. The hay was all got in; the fields round Thornfield were green and shorn; the roads white and baked; the trees were in their dark prime;  hedge and wood, full-leaved and deeply tinted, contrasted well with the sunny hue of the cleared meadows between.
On Midsummer-eve, Adele, weary with gathering wild strawberries in Hay Lane half the day, had gone to bed with the sun. I watched her drop asleep, and when I left her, I sought the garden.

It was now the sweetest hour of the twenty-four:- ‘Day its fervid fires had wasted,’ and dew fell cool on panting plain and scorched summit. Where the sun had gone down in simple state- pure of the pomp of clouds- spread a solemn purple, burning with the light of red jewel and furnace flame at one point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and wide, soft and still softer, over half heaven.

The east had its own charm of fine deep blue, and its own modest gem, a rising and solitary star: soon it would boast the moon; but she was yet beneath the horizon.

I walked a while on the pavement; but a subtle, well-known scent- that of a cigar- stole from some window; I saw the library casement open a hand-breadth; I knew I might be watched thence; so I went apart into the orchard. No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like; it was full of trees, it bloomed with flowers: a very high wall shut it out from the court, on one side; on the other, a beech avenue screened it from the lawn. At the bottom was a sunk fence; its sole separation from lonely fields: a winding walk, bordered with laurels and terminating in a giant horse-chestnut, circled at the base by a seat, led down to the fence. Here one could wander unseen. While such honey-dew fell, such silence reigned, such gloaming gathered, I felt as if I could haunt such shade for ever; but in threading the flower and fruit parterres at the upper part of the enclosure, enticed there by the light the now rising moon cast on this more open quarter, my step is stayed-not by sound, not by sight, but once more by a warning fragrance.

Sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose have long been yielding their evening sacrifice of incense: this new scent is neither of shrub nor flower; it is- I know it well- it is Mr. Rochester’s cigar. I look round and I listen. I see trees laden with ripening fruit. I hear a nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile off; no moving form is visible, no coming step audible; but that perfume increases: I must flee. I make for the wicket leading to the shrubbery, and I see Mr. Rochester entering. I step aside into the ivy recess; he will not stay long: he will soon return whence he came, and if I sit still he will never see me.

But no- eventide is as pleasant to him as to me, and this antique garden as attractive; and he strolls on, now lifting the gooseberry-tree branches to look at the fruit, large as plums, with which they are laden; now taking a ripe cherry from the wall; now stooping towards a knot of flowers, either to inhale their fragrance or to admire the dew-beads on their petals. A great moth goes humming by me; it alights on a plant at Mr. Rochester’s foot: he sees it, and bends to examine it.

‘Now, he has his back towards me,’ thought I, ‘and he is occupied too; perhaps, if I walk softly, I can slip away unnoticed.’

I trode on an edging of turf that the crackle of the pebbly gravel might not betray me: he was standing among the beds at a yard or two distant from where I had to pass; the moth apparently engaged him. ‘I shall get by very well,’ I meditated. As I crossed his shadow, thrown long over the garden by the moon, not yet risen high, he said quietly, without turning-

‘Jane, come and look at this fellow.’

I had made no noise: he had not eyes behind- could his shadow feel?

I started at first, and then I approached him.

‘Look at his wings,’ said he, ‘he reminds me rather of a West Indian insect; one does not often see so large and gay a night-rover in England; there! he is flown.’

The moth roamed away. I was sheepishly retreating also; but Mr. Rochester followed me, and when we reached the wicket, he said- ‘Turn back: on so lovely a night it is a shame to sit in the house; and surely no one can wish to go to bed while sunset is thus at meeting with moonrise.’

It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment. I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr. Rochester in the shadowy orchard; but I could not find a reason to allege for leaving him. I followed with lagging step, and thoughts busily bent on discovering a means of extrication; but he himself looked so composed and so grave also, I became ashamed of feeling any confusion: the evil- if evil existent or prospective there was- seemed to lie with me only; his mind was unconscious and quiet.

‘Jane,’ he recommenced, as we entered the laurel walk, and slowly strayed down in the direction of the sunk fence and the horse-chestnut, ‘Thornfield is a pleasant place in summer, is it not?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You must have become in some degree attached to the house,- you, who have an eye for natural beauties, and a good deal of the organ of Adhesiveness?’

‘I am attached to it, indeed.’

‘And though I don’t comprehend how it is, I perceive you have acquired a degree of regard for that foolish little child Adele, too; and even for simple dame Fairfax?’

‘Yes, sir; in different ways, I have an affection for both.’

‘And would be sorry to part with them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Pity!’ he said, and sighed and paused. ‘It is always the way of events in this life,’ he continued presently: ‘no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting-place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired.’

‘Must I move on, sir?’ I asked. ‘Must I leave Thornfield?’

‘I believe you must, Jane. I am sorry, Janet, but I believe indeed you must.’

This was a blow: but I did not let it prostrate me.

‘Well, sir, I shall be ready when the order to march comes.’

‘It is come now- I must give it to-night.’

‘Then you are going to be married, sir?’

‘Ex-act-ly- pre-cise-ly: with your usual acuteness, you have hit the nail straight on the head.’

‘Soon, sir?’

‘Very soon, my- that is, Miss Eyre: and you’ll remember, Jane, the first time I, or Rumour, plainly intimated to you that it was my intention to put my old bachelor’s neck into the sacred noose, to enter into the holy estate of matrimony- to take Miss Ingram to my bosom, in short (she’s an extensive armful: but that’s not to the point- one can’t have too much of such a very excellent thing as my beautiful Blanche): well, as I was saying- listen to me, Jane!

You’re not turning your head to look after more moths, are you? That was only a lady-clock, child, “flying away home.” I wish to remind you that it was you who first said to me, with that discretion I respect in you- with that foresight, prudence, and humility which befit your responsible and dependent position- that in case I married Miss Ingram, both you and little Adele had better trot forthwith. I pass over the sort of slur conveyed in this suggestion on the character of my beloved; indeed, when you are far away, Janet, I’ll try to forget it: I shall notice only its wisdom; which is such that I have made it my law of action. Adele must go to school; and you, Miss Eyre, must get a new situation.’

‘Yes, sir, I will advertise immediately: and meantime, I suppose-’ I was going to say, ‘I suppose I may stay here, till I find another shelter to betake myself to’: but I stopped, feeling it would not do to risk a long sentence, for my voice was not quite under command.

‘In about a month I hope to be a bridegroom,’ continued Mr. Rochester; ‘and in the interim, I shall myself look out for employment and an asylum for you.’

‘Thank you, sir; I am sorry to give-’

‘Oh, no need to apologise! I consider that when a dependant does her duty as well as you have done yours, she has a sort of claim upon her employer for any little assistance he can conveniently render her; indeed I have already, through my future mother-in-law, heard of a place that I think will suit: it is to undertake the education of the five daughters of Mrs. Dionysius O’Gall of Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland. You’ll like Ireland, I think: they’re such warmhearted people there, they say.’

‘It is a long way off nike sb dunks, sir.’

‘No matter- a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the distance.’

‘Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier-’

‘From what, Jane?’

‘From England and from Thornfield: and-’ ‘Well?’

‘From you, sir.’

I said this almost involuntarily, and, with as little sanction of free will, my tears gushed out. I did not cry so as to be heard, however; I avoided sobbing. The thought of Mrs. O’Gall and Bitternutt Lodge struck cold to my heart; and colder the thought of all the brine and foam, destined, as it seemed, to rush between me and the master at whose side I now walked, and coldest the remembrance of the wider ocean- wealth, caste, custom intervened between me and what I naturally and inevitably loved.

‘It is a long way,’ I again said.

‘It is, to be sure; and when you get to Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland, I shall never see you again, Jane: that’s morally certain. I never go over to Ireland, not having myself much of a fancy for the country. We have been good friends, Jane; have we not?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And when friends are on the eve of separation, they like to spend the little time that remains to them close to each other.

Come! we’ll talk over the voyage and the parting quietly half an hour or so, while the stars enter into their shining life up in heaven yonder: here is the chestnut tree: here is the bench at its old roots.

Come, we will sit there in peace to-night, though we should never more be destined to sit there together.’ He seated me and himself.

‘It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels: but if I can’t do better, how is it to be helped? Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?’

I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still.

‘Because,’ he said, ‘I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you- especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you,- you’d forget me.’

‘That I never should, sir: you know-’ Impossible to proceed.

‘Jane, do you hear that nightingale singing in the wood? Listen!’

In listening, I sobbed convulsively; for I could repress what I endured no longer; I was obliged to yield, and I was shaken from head to foot with acute distress. When I did speak, it was only to express an impetuous wish that I had never been born, or never come to Thornfield.

‘Because you are sorry to leave it?’

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

‘I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield:- I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life,- momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight in,- with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.’

‘Where do you see the necessity?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.’

‘In what shape?’

‘In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman,- your bride.’

‘My bride! What bride? I have no bride!’

‘But you will have.’

‘Yes;- I will!’- I will!’ He set his teeth.

‘Then I must go:- you have said it yourself.’

‘No: you must stay! I swear it- and the oath shall be kept.’

‘I tell you I must go!’ I retorted, roused to something like passion. ‘Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?- a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!- I have as much soul as you,- and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;- it is my spirit  that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,- as we are!’

‘As we are!’ repeated Mr. Rochester- ’so,’ he added, enclosing me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips:

’so, Jane!’

‘Yes, so, sir,’ I rejoined: ‘and yet not so; for you are a married man- or as good as a married man, and wed to one inferior to you- to one with whom you have no sympathy- whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union: therefore I am better than you- let me go!’

‘Where, Jane? To Ireland?’

‘Yes- to Ireland. I have spoken my mind, and can go anywhere now.’

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

‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.’

Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him.

‘And your will shall decide your destiny,’ he said: ‘I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.’

‘You play a farce, which I merely laugh at.’

‘I ask you to pass through life at my side- to be my second self, and best earthly companion.’

‘For that fate you have already made your choice, and must abide by it.’

‘Jane, be still a few moments: you are over-excited: I will be still too.’

A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away- away- to an indefinite distance- it died. The nightingale’s song was then the only voice of the hour: in listening to it, I again wept. Mr. Rochester sat

quiet, looking at me gently and seriously. Some time passed before he spoke; he at last said-

‘Come to my side, Jane, and let us explain and understand one another.’

‘I will never again come to your side: I am torn away now, and cannot return.’

‘But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry.’

I was silent: I thought he mocked me.

‘Come, Jane- come hither.’

‘Your bride stands between us.’

He rose, and with a stride reached me.

‘My bride is here,’ he said, again drawing me to him, ‘because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?’

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

‘Do you doubt me, Jane?’

‘Entirely.’

‘You have no faith in me?’

‘Not a whit.’

‘Am I a liar in your eyes?’ he asked passionately. ‘Little sceptic, you shall be convinced. What love have I for Miss Ingram? None: and that you know. What love has she for me? None: as I have taken pains to prove: I caused a rumour to reach her that my fortune was not a third of what was supposed, and after that I presented myself to see the result; it was coldness both from her and her mother. I would not- I could not- marry Miss Ingram. You- you strange, you almost unearthly thing!- I love as my own flesh. You- poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are- I entreat to accept me as a husband.’

‘What, me!’ I ejaculated, beginning in his earnestness- and especially in his incivility- to credit his sincerity: ‘me who have not a friend in the world but you- if you are my friend: not a shilling but what you have given me?’

‘You, Jane, I must have you for my own- entirely my own. Will you be mine? Say yes, quickly.’

‘Mr. Rochester, let me look at your face: turn to the moonlight.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I want to read your countenance- turn!’

‘There! you will find it scarcely more legible than a crumpled, scratched page. Read on: only make haste, for I suffer.’

His face was very much agitated and very much flushed, and there were strong workings in the features, and strange gleams in the eyes.

‘Oh, Jane, you torture me!’ he exclaimed. ‘With that searching and yet faithful and generous look, you torture me!’

‘How can I do that? If you are true, and your offer real, my only feelings to you must be gratitude and devotion- they cannot torture.’

‘Gratitude!’ he ejaculated; and added wildly- ‘Jane, accept me quickly. Say, Edward- give me my name- Edward- I will marry you.’

‘Are you in earnest? Do you truly love me? Do you sincerely wish me to be your wife?’

‘I do; and if an oath is necessary to satisfy you, I swear it.’

‘Then, sir, I will marry you.’

‘Edward- my little wife!’

‘Dear Edward!’

‘Come to me- come to me entirely now,’ said he; and added, in his deepest tone, speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine, ‘Make my happiness- I will make yours.’

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

‘There is no one to meddle, sir. I have no kindred to interfere.’

‘No- that is the best of it,’ he said. And if I had loved him less I should have thought his accent and look of exultation savage; but, sitting by him, roused from the nightmare of parting- called to the paradise of union- I thought only of the bliss given me to drink in so abundant a flow. Again and again he said, ‘Are you happy, Jane?’

And again and again I answered, ‘Yes,’ After which he murmured, ‘It will atone- it will atone. Have I not found her friendless, and cold, and comfortless? Will I not guard, and cherish, and solace her? Is there not love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at God’s tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do.

For the world’s judgment- I wash my hands thereof. For man’s opinion- I defy it.’

But what had befallen the night? The moon was not yet set, and we were all in shadow: I could scarcely see my master’s face, near as I was. And what ailed the chestnut tree? it writhed and groaned; while wind roared in the laurel walk, and came sweeping over us.

‘We must go in,’ said Mr. Rochester: ‘the weather changes. I could have sat with thee till morning, Jane.’

‘And so,’ thought I, ‘could I with you.’ I should have said so, perhaps, but a livid, vivid spark leapt out of a cloud at which I was looking, and there was a crack, a crash, and a close rattling peal; and I thought only of hiding my dazzled eyes against Mr. Rochester’s shoulder.

The rain rushed down. He hurried me up the walk, through the grounds, and into the house; but we were quite wet before we could pass the threshold. He was taking off my shawl in the hall, and shaking the water out of my loosened hair, when Mrs. Fairfax emerged from her room. I did not observe her at first, nor did Mr. Rochester. The lamp was lit. The dock was on the stroke of twelve.

‘Hasten to take off your wet things,’ said he; ‘and before you go, good-night- good-night, my darling!’

He kissed me repeatedly. When I looked up, on leaving his arms, there stood the widow, pale, grave, and amazed. I only smiled at her, and ran upstairs. ‘Explanation will do for another time,’ thought I. Still, when I reached my chamber, I felt a pang at the idea she should even temporarily misconstrue what she had seen. But joy soon effaced every other feeling; and loud as the wind blew, near and deep as the thunder crashed, fierce and frequent as the lightning gleamed, cataract-like as the rain fell during a storm of two hours’ duration, I experienced no fear and little nike sb awe. Mr. Rochester came thrice to my door in the course of it, to ask if I was safe and tranquil: and that was comfort, that was strength for anything.

Before I left my bed in the morning, little Adele came running in to tell me that the great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had been struck by lightning in the night, and half of it split away.

MR. ROCHESTER had given me but one week’s leave of absence: yet a month elapsed before I quitted Gateshead. I wished to leave nike dunks immediately after the funeral, but Georgiana entreated me to stay till she could get off to London, whither she was now at last invited by her uncle, Mr. Gibson, who had come down to direct his sister’s interment and settle the family affairs. Georgiana said she dreaded being left alone with Eliza; from her she got neither sympathy in her dejection, support in her fears, nor aid in her preparations; so I bore with her feeble-minded wailings and selfish lamentations as well as I could, and did my best in sewing for her and packing her dresses. It is true, that while I worked, she would idle; and I thought to myself, ‘If you and I were destined to live always together, cousin, we would commence matters on a different footing.
I should not settle tamely down into being the forbearing party; I should assign you your share of labour, and compel you to accomplish it, or else it should be left undone: I should insist, also, on your keeping some of those drawling, half-insincere complaints hushed in your own breast. It is only because our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes at a peculiarly mournful season, that I consent thus to render it so patient and compliant on my part.’

At last I saw Georgiana off; but now it was Eliza’s turn to request me to stay another week. Her plans required all her time and attention, she said; she was about to depart for some unknown bourne; and all day long she stayed in her own room, her door bolted within, filling trunks, emptying drawers, burning papers, and holding no communication with any one. She wished me to look after the house, to see callers, and answer notes of condolence.

One morning she told me I was at liberty. ‘And,’ she added, ‘I am obliged to you for your valuable services and discreet conduct!

There is some difference between living with such an one as you and with Georgiana: you perform your own part in life and burden no one.

To-morrow,’ she continued, ‘I set out for the Continent. I shall take up my abode in a religious house near Lisle- a nunnery you would call it; there I shall be quiet and unmolested. I shall devote myself for a time to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas, and to a careful study of the workings of their system: if I find it to be, as I half suspect it is, the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently and in order, I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take the veil.’

I neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to dissuade her from it. ‘The vocation will fit you to a hair,’ I thought: ‘much good may it do you!’

When we parted, she said: ‘Good-bye, cousin Jane Eyre; I wish you well: you have some sense.’

I then returned: ‘You are not without sense, cousin Eliza; but what you have, I suppose, in another year will be walled up alive in a French convent. However, it is not my business, and so it suits you, I don’t much care.’

‘You are in the right,’ said she; and with these words we each went our separate way. As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or her sister again, I may as well mention here, that Georgiana made an advantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion, and that Eliza actually took the veil, and is at this day superior of the convent where she passed the period of her novitiate, and which she endowed with her fortune.

How people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long or short, I did not know: I had never experienced the sensation. I had known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after a long walk, to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy; and later, what it was to come back from church to Lowood, to long for a plenteous meal and a good fire, and to be unable to get either.

Neither of these returnings was very pleasant or desirable: no magnet drew me to a given point, increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came. The return to Thornfield was yet to be tried.

My journey seemed tedious- very tedious: fifty miles one day, a night spent at an inn; fifty miles the next day. During the first twelve hours I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments; I saw her disfigured and discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice. I mused on the funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black train of tenants and servants- few was the number of relatives- the gaping vault, the silent church, the solemn service. Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana; I beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a convent cell; and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities of person and character. The evening gave them quite another turn: laid down on my traveller’s bed, I left reminiscence for anticipation.

I was going back to Thornfield: but how long was I to stay there? Not long; of that I was sure. I had heard from Mrs. Fairfax in the interim of my absence: the party at the hall was dispersed; Mr. Rochester had left for London three weeks ago, but he was then expected to return in a fortnight. Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he was gone to make arrangements for his wedding, as he had talked of purchasing a new carriage: she said the idea of his marrying Miss Ingram still seemed strange to her; but from what everybody said, and from what she had herself seen, she could no longer doubt that the event would shortly take place. ‘You would be strangely incredulous if you did doubt it,’ was my mental comment. ‘I don’t doubt it.’

The question followed, ‘Where was I to go?’ I dreamt of Miss Ingram all the night: in a vivid morning dream I saw her closing the gates of Thornfield against me and pointing me out another road; and Mr. Rochester looked on with his arms folded- smiling sardonically, as it seemed, at both her and me.

I had not notified to Mrs. Fairfax the exact day of my return; for I did not wish either car or carriage to meet me at Millcote. I proposed to walk the distance quietly by myself; and very quietly, after leaving my box in the ostler’s care, did I slip away from the George Inn, about six o’clock of a June evening, and take the old road to Thornfield: a road which lay chiefly through fields, and was now little frequented.

It was not a bright or splendid summer evening, though fair and soft: the haymakers were at work all along the road; and the sky, though far from cloudless, was such as promised well for the future: its blue- where blue was visible- was mild and settled, and its cloud strata high and thin. The west, too, was warm: no watery gleam chilled it- it seemed as if there was a fire lit, an altar burning behind its screen of marbled vapour, and out of apertures shone a golden redness.

I felt glad as the road shortened before me: so glad that I stopped once to ask myself what that joy meant: and to remind reason that it was not to my home I was going, or to a permanent resting-place, or to a place where fond friends looked out for me and waited my arrival.

‘Mrs. Fairfax will smile you a calm welcome, to be sure,’ said I; ‘and little Adele will clap her hands and jump to see you: but you know very well you are thinking of another than they, and that he is not thinking of you.’

But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience? These affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege of again looking on Mr. Rochester, whether he looked on me or not; and they added- ‘Hasten! hasten! be with him while you may: but a few more days or weeks, at most, and you are parted from him for ever!’ And then I strangled a new-born agony- a deformed thing which I could not persuade myself to own and rear- and ran on.

They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather, the labourers are just quitting their work, and returning home with their rakes on their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive. I have but a field or two to traverse, and then I shall cross the road and reach the gates. How full the hedges are of roses! But I have no time to gather any; I want to be at the house. I passed a tall briar, shooting leafy and flowery branches nike sb dunks across the path; I see the narrow stile with stone steps; and I see- Mr. Rochester sitting there, a book and a pencil in his hand; he is writing.

Well, he is not a ghost; yet every nerve I have is unstrung: for a moment I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did not think I should tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my voice or the power of motion in his presence. I will go back as soon as I can stir: I need not make an absolute fool of myself. I know another way to the house. It does not signify if I knew twenty ways; for he has seen me.

‘Hillo!’ he cries; and he puts up his book and his pencil. ‘There you are! Come on, if you please.’

I suppose I do come on; though in what fashion I know not; being scarcely cognisant of my movements, and solicitous only to appear calm; and, above all, to control the working muscles of my face- which I feel rebel insolently against my will, and struggle to express what I had resolved to conceal. But I have a veil- it is down: I may make shift yet to behave with decent composure.

‘And this is Jane Eyre? Are you coming from Millcote, and on foot? Yes- just one of your tricks: not to send for a carriage, and come clattering over street and road like a common mortal, but to steal into the vicinage of your home along with twilight, just as if you were a dream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with yourself this last month?’

‘I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead.’

‘A true Janian reply! Good angels be my guard. She comes from the other world- from the abode of people who are dead; and tells me so when she meets me alone here in the gloaming! If I dared, I’d touch you, to see if you are substance or shadow, you elf!- but I’d as soon offer to take hold of a blue ignis fatuus light in a marsh.

Truant! truant!’ he added, when he had paused an instant. ‘Absent from me a whole month, and forgetting me quite, I’ll be sworn!’

I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again, even though broken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my master, and by the knowledge that I was nothing to him: but there was ever in Mr. Rochester (so at least I thought) such a wealth of the power of communicating happiness, that to taste but of the crumbs he scattered to stray and stranger birds like me, was to feast genially. His last words were balm: they seemed to imply that it imported something to him whether I forgot him or not. And he had spoken of Thornfield as my home- would that it were my home!

He did not leave the stile, and I hardly liked to ask to go by. I inquired soon if he had not been to London.

‘Yes; I suppose you found that out by second-sight.’

‘Mrs. Fairfax told me in a letter.’

‘And did she inform you what I went to do?’

‘Oh, yes, sir! Everybody knew your errand.’

‘You must see the carriage, Jane, and tell me if you don’t think it will suit Mrs. Rochester exactly; and whether she won’t look like Queen Boadicea, leaning back against those purple cushions. I wish, Jane, I were a trifle better adapted to match with her externally.

Tell me now, fairy as you are- can’t you give me a charm, or a philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?’

‘It would be past the power of magic, sir’; and, in thought, I added, ‘A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty.’

Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think it too good for common purposes: it was the real sunshine of feeling- he shed it over me now.

‘Pass, Janet,’ said he, making room for me to cross the stile: ‘go up home, and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend’s threshold.’

All I had now to do was to obey him in silence: no need for me to colloquise further. I got over the stile without a word, and meant to leave him calmly. An impulse held me fast- a force turned me round.

I said- or something in me said for me, and in spite of me- ‘Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home- my only home.’

I walked on so fast that even he could hardly have overtaken me had he tried. Little Adele was half wild with delight when she saw me.

Mrs. Fairfax received me with her usual plain friendliness. Leah smiled, and even Sophie bid me ‘bon soir’ with glee. This was very pleasant; there is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.

I that evening shut my eyes resolutely against the future: I stopped my ears against the voice that kept warning me of near separation and coming grief. When tea was over and Mrs. Fairfax had taken her knitting, and I had assumed a low seat near her, and Adele, kneeling on the carpet, had nestled close up to me, and a sense of mutual affection seemed to surround us with a ring of golden peace, I uttered a silent prayer that we might not be parted far or soon; but when, as we thus sat, Mr. Rochester entered, unannounced, and looking at us, seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle of a group so amicable- when he said he supposed the old lady was all right now that she had got her adopted daughter back again, and added that he saw Adele was ‘prete a croquer sa petite maman Anglaise’- I half ventured to hope that he would, even after his marriage, keep us together somewhere under the shelter of his protection, and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence.

A fortnight of dubious calm succeeded my return to Thornfield Hall.

Nothing was said of the master’s marriage, and I saw no preparation going on for such an event. Almost every day I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had yet heard anything decided: her answer was always in the negative. Once she said she had actually put the question to Mr. Rochester as to when he was going to bring his bride home; but he had answered her only by a joke and one of his queer looks, and she could not tell what to make of him.

One thing specially surprised me, and that was, there were no journeyings backward and forward, no visits to Ingram Park: to be sure it was twenty miles off, on the borders of another county; but what was that distance to an ardent lover? To so practised and indefatigable a horseman as Mr. Rochester, it would be but a morning’s ride. I began to cherish hopes I had no right to conceive: that the match was broken off; that rumour had been mistaken; that one or both parties had changed their minds. I used to look at my master’s face to see if it were sad or fierce; but sb dunks I could not remember the time when it had been so uniformly clear of clouds or evil feelings.

If, in the moments I and my pupil spent with him, I lacked spirits and sank into inevitable dejection, he became even gay. Never had he called me more frequently to his presence; never been kinder to me when there- and, alas! never had I loved him so well.

PRESENTIMENTS are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to nike air force which humanity has not yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man.
When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie Leaven say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little child; and that to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to one’s self or one’s kin. The saying might have worn out of my memory, had not a circumstance immediately followed which served indelibly to fix it there. The next day Bessie was sent for home to the deathbed of her little sister.

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

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

I did not like this iteration of one idea- this strange recurrence of one image, and I grew nervous as bedtime approached and the hour of the vision drew near. It was from companionship with this baby-phantom I had been roused on that moonlight night when I heard the cry; and it was on the afternoon of the day following I was summoned downstairs by a message that some one wanted me in Mrs. Fairfax’s room. On repairing thither, I found a man waiting for me, having the appearance of a gentleman’s servant: he was dressed in deep mourning, and the hat he held in his hand was surrounded with a crape band.

‘I daresay you hardly remember me, Miss,’ he said, rising as I entered; ‘but my name is Leaven: I lived coachman with Mrs. Reed when you were at Gateshead, eight or nine years since, and I live there still.’

‘Oh, Robert! how do you do? I remember you very well: you used to give me a ride sometimes on Miss Georgiana’s bay pony. And how is Bessie? You are married to Bessie?’

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

‘And are the family well at the house, Robert?’

‘I am sorry I can’t give you better news of them, Miss: they are very badly at present- in great trouble.’

‘I hope no one is dead,’ I said, glancing at his black dress. He too looked down at the crape round his hat and replied-

‘Mr. John died yesterday was a week, at his chambers in London.’

‘Mr. John?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how does his mother bear it?’

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

‘I heard from Bessie he was not doing well.’

‘Doing well! He could not do worse: he ruined his health and his estate amongst the worst men and the worst women. He got into debt and into jail: his mother helped him out twice, but as soon as he was free he returned to his old companions and habits. His head was not strong: the knaves he lived amongst fooled him beyond anything I ever heard.

He came down to Gateshead about three weeks ago and wanted missis to give up all to him. Missis refused: her means have long been much reduced by his extravagance; so he went back again, and the next news was that he was dead. How he died, God knows!- they say he killed himself.’

I was silent: the tidings were frightful. Robert Leaven resumed-

‘Missis had been out of health herself for some time: she had got very stout, but was not strong with it; and the loss of money and fear of poverty were quite breaking her down. The information about Mr. John’s death and the manner of it came too suddenly: it brought on a  stroke. She was three days without speaking; but last Tuesday she seemed rather better: she appeared as if she wanted to say something, and kept making signs to my wife and mumbling. It was only yesterday morning, however, that Bessie understood she was pronouncing your name; and at last she made out the words, “Bring Jane- fetch Jane Eyre: I want to speak to her.” Bessie is not sure whether she is in her right mind, or means anything by the words; but she told Miss Reed and Miss Georgiana, and advised them to send for you. The young ladies put it off at first; but their mother grew so restless, and said, “Jane, Jane,” so many times, that at last they consented. I left Gateshead yesterday: and if you can get ready, Miss, I should like to take you back with me early to-morrow morning.’

‘Yes, Robert, I shall be ready: it seems to me that I ought to go.’

‘I think so too, Miss. Bessie said she was sure you would not refuse: but I suppose you will have to ask leave before you can get off?’

‘Yes; and I will do it now’; and having directed him to the servants’ hall, and recommended him to the care of John’s wife, and the attentions of John himself, I went in search of Mr. Rochester.

He was not in any of the lower rooms; he was not in the yard, the stables, or the grounds. I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had seen him;- yes: she believed he was playing billiards with Miss Ingram. To the billiard-room I hastened: the click of balls and the hum of voices resounded thence; Mr. Rochester, Miss Ingram, the two Misses Eshton, and their admirers, were all busied in the game. It required some courage to disturb so interesting a party; my errand, however, was one I could not defer, so I approached the master where he stood at Miss Ingram’s side. She turned as I drew near, and looked at me haughtily: her eyes seemed to demand, ‘What can the creeping creature want now?’ and when I said, in a low voice, ‘Mr. Rochester,’ she made a movement as if tempted to order me away. I remember her appearance at the moment- it was very graceful and very striking: she wore a morning robe of sky-blue crape; a gauzy azure scarf was twisted in her hair. She had been all animation with the game, and irritated pride did not lower the expression of her haughty lineaments.

‘Does that person want you?’ she inquired of Mr. Rochester; and Mr. Rochester turned to see who the ‘person’ was. He made a curious grimace- one of his strange and equivocal demonstrations- threw down his cue and followed me from the room.

‘Well, Jane?’ he said, as he rested his back against the school-room door, which he had shut.

‘If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two.’

‘What to do?- where to go?’

‘To see a sick lady who has sent for me.’

‘What sick lady?- where does she live?’

for people to see her that distance?’

‘Her name is Reed sir- Mrs. Reed.’

‘Reed of Gateshead? There was a Reed of Gateshead, a magistrate.’

‘It is his widow, sir.’

‘And what have you to do with her? How do you know her?’

‘Mr. Reed was my uncle- my mother’s brother.’

‘The deuce he was! You never told me that before: you always said you had no relations.’

‘None that would own me, sir. Mr. Reed is dead, and his wife cast me off.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I was poor, and burdensome, and she disliked me.’

‘But Reed left children?- you must have cousins? Sir George Lynn was talking of a Reed of Gateshead yesterday, who, he said, was one of the veriest rascals on town; and Ingram was mentioning a Georgiana Reed of the same place, who was much admired for her beauty a season or two ago in London.’

‘John Reed is dead, too, sir: he ruined himself and half-ruined his family, and is supposed to have committed suicide. The news so shocked his mother that it brought on an apoplectic attack.’

‘And what good can you do her? Nonsense, Jane! I would never think of running a hundred miles to see an old lady who will, perhaps, be dead before you reach her: besides, you say she cast you off.’

‘Yes, sir, but that is long ago; and when her circumstances were very different: I could not be easy to neglect her wishes now.’

‘How long will you stay?’

‘As short a time as possible, sir.’

‘Promise me only to stay a week-’

‘I had better not pass my word: I might be obliged to break it.’

‘At all events you will come back: you will not be induced under any pretext to take up a permanent residence with her?’

‘Oh, no! I shall certainly return if all be well.’

‘And who goes with you? You don’t travel a hundred miles alone.’

‘No, sir, she has sent her coachman.’

‘A person to be trusted?’

‘Yes, sir, he has lived ten years in the family.’

Mr. Rochester meditated. ‘When do you wish to go?’

‘Early to-morrow morning, sir.’

‘Well, you must have some money; you can’t travel without money, and I daresay you have not much: I have given you no salary yet. How much have you in the world, Jane?’ he asked, smiling.

I drew out my purse; a meagre thing it was. ‘Five shillings, sir.’ He took the purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as if its scantiness amused him. Soon he produced his pocket-book: ‘Here,’ said he, offering me a note; it was fifty pounds, and he owed me but fifteen. I told him I had no change.

‘I don’t want change; you know that. Take your wages.’

I declined accepting more than was my due. He scowled at first; then, as if recollecting something, he said-

‘Right, right! Better not give you all now: you would, perhaps, stay away three months if you had fifty pounds. There are ten; is it not plenty?’

‘Yes, sir, but now you owe me five.’

‘Come back for it, then; I am your banker for forty pounds.’

‘Mr. Rochester, I may as well mention another matter of business to you while I have the opportunity.’

‘Matter of business? I am curious to hear it.’

‘You have as good as informed me, sir, that you are going shortly to be married?’

‘Yes; what then?’

‘In that case, sir, Adele ought to go to school: I am sure you will perceive the necessity of it.’

‘To get her out of my bride’s way, who might otherwise walk over her rather too emphatically? There’s sense in the suggestion; not a doubt of it. Adele, as you say, must go to school; and you, of course, must march straight to- the devil?’

‘I hope not, sir; but I must seek another situation somewhere.’

‘In course!’ he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion of features equally fantastic and ludicrous. He looked at me some minutes.

‘And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited by you to seek a place, I suppose?’

‘No, sir; I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify me in asking favours of them- but I shall advertise.’

‘You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!’ he growled. ‘At your peril you advertise! I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.’

‘And so have I, sir,’ I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me. ‘I could not spare the money on any account.’

‘Little niggard!’ said he, ‘refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me five pounds, Jane.’

‘Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.’

‘Just let me look at the cash.’

‘No, sir; you are not to be trusted.’

‘Jane!’

‘Sir?’

‘Promise me one thing.’

‘I’ll promise you anything, sir, that I think I am likely to perform.’

‘Not to advertise: and to trust this quest of a situation to me. I’ll find you one in time.’

‘I shall be glad so to do, sir, if you, in your turn, will promise that I and Adele shall be both safe out of the house before your bride enters it.’

‘Very well! very well! I’ll pledge my word on it. You go to-morrow, then?’

‘Yes, sir; early.’

‘Shall you come down to the drawing-room after dinner?’

‘No, sir, I must prepare for the journey.’

‘Then you and I must bid good-bye for a little while?’

‘I suppose so, sir.’

‘And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me; I’m not quite up to it.’

‘They say, Farewell, or any other form they prefer.’

‘Then say it.’

‘Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the present.’

‘What must I say?’

‘The same, if you like, sir.’

‘Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present; is that all?’

‘Yes.’

‘It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should like something else: a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands, for instance; but no- that would not content me either.

So you’ll do no more than say Farewell, Jane?’

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

‘Very likely; but it is blank and cool- “Farewell.”‘

‘How long is he going to stand with his back against that door?’

I asked myself; ‘I want to commence my packing.’ The dinner-bell rang, and suddenly away he bolted, without another syllable: I saw him no more during the day, and was off before he had risen in the morning.

I reached the lodge at Gateshead about five air force 1 shoes o’clock in the afternoon of the first of May: I stepped in there before going up to the hall. It was very clean and neat: the ornamental windows were hung with little white curtains; the floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were burnished bright, and the fire burnt clear. Bessie sat on the hearth, nursing her last-born, and Robert and his sister played quietly in a corner.

‘Bless you!- I knew you would come!’ exclaimed Mrs. Leaven, as I entered.

‘Yes, Bessie,’ said I, after I had kissed her; ‘and I trust I am not too late. How is Mrs. Reed?- Alive still, I hope.’

‘Yes, she is alive; and more sensible and collected than she was.

The doctor says she may linger a week or two yet; but he hardly thinks she will finally recover.’

‘Has she mentioned me lately?’

‘She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would come: but she is sleeping now, or was ten minutes ago, when I was up at the house. She generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon, and wakes up about six or seven. Will you rest yourself here an hour, Miss, and then I will go up with you?’

Robert here entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the cradle and went to welcome him: afterwards she insisted on my taking off my bonnet and having some tea; for she said I looked pale and tired. I was glad to accept her hospitality; and I submitted to be relieved of my travelling garb just as passively as I used to let her undress me when a child.

Old times crowded fast back on me as I watched her bustling about- setting out the tea-tray with her best china, cutting bread and butter, toasting a tea-cake, and, between whiles, giving little Robert or Jane an occasional tap or push, just as she used to give me in former days. Bessie had retained her quick temper as well as her light foot and good looks.

Tea ready, I was going to approach the table; but she desired me to sit still, quite in her old peremptory tones. I must be served at the fireside, she said; and she placed before me a little round stand with my cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to accommodate me with some privately purloined dainty on a nursery chair: and I smiled and obeyed her as in bygone days.

She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort of a person the mistress was; and when I told her there was only a master, whether he was a nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I told her he was rather an ugly man, but quite a gentleman; and that he treated me kindly, and I was content. Then I went on to describe to her the gay company that had lately been staying at the house; and to these details Bessie listened with interest: they were precisely of the kind she relished.

In such conversation an hour was soon gone: Bessie restored to me my bonnet, etc., and, accompanied by her, I quitted the lodge for the hall. It was also accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years ago, walked down the path I was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw morning in January, I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered heart- a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation- to seek the chilly harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and unexplored. The same hostile roof now again rose before me: my prospects were doubtful yet; and I had yet an aching heart. I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers, and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished.

‘You shall go into the breakfast-room first,’ said Bessie, as she preceded me through the hall; ‘the young ladies will be there.’

In another moment I was within that apartment. There was every article of furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first introduced to Mr. Brocklehurst: the very rug he had stood upon still covered the hearth. Glancing at the bookcases, I thought I could distinguish the two volumes of Bewick’s British Birds occupying their old place on the third shelf, and Gulliver’s Travels and the Arabian Nights ranged just above. The inanimate objects were not changed; but the living things had altered past recognition.

Two young ladies appeared before me; one very tall, almost as tall as Miss Ingram- very thin too, with a sallow face and severe mien. There was something ascetic in her look, was augmented by the extreme plainness of a straight-skirted, black, stuff dress, a starched linen collar, hair combed away from the temples, and the nun-like ornament of a string of ebony beads and a crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza, though I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that elongated and colourless visage.

The other was as certainly Georgiana: but not the Georgiana I remembered- the slim and fairy-like girl of eleven. This was a full-blown, very plump damsel, fair as waxwork, with handsome and regular features, languishing blue eyes, and ringleted yellow hair.

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

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

Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed me by the name of ‘Miss Eyre.’ Eliza’s greeting was delivered in a short, abrupt voice, without a smile; and then she sat down again, fixed her eyes on the fire, and seemed to forget me.

Georgiana added to her ‘How d ‘ye do?’ several commonplaces about my journey, the weather, and so on, uttered in rather a drawling tone: and accompanied by sundry side-glances that measured me from head to foot-now traversing the folds of my drab merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting you know that they think you a ‘quiz’ without actually saying the words. A certain superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone, express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by any positive rudeness in word or deed.

A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power over me it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi-sarcastic attentions of the other- Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana ruffle me. The fact was, I had other things to think about; within the last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than any they could raise- pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite had been excited than any it was in their power to inflict or bestow- that their airs gave me no concern either for good or bad.

‘How is Mrs. Reed?’ I asked soon, looking calmly at Georgiana, who thought fit to bridle at the direct address, as if it were an unexpected liberty.

‘Mrs. Reed? Ah, mama, you mean; she is extremely poorly: I doubt if you can see her to-night.’

‘If,’ said I, ‘you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come, I should be much obliged to you.’

Georgiana almost started, and she opened her blue eyes wild and wide. ‘I know she had a particular wish to see me,’ I added, ‘and I would not defer attending to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary.’

‘Mama dislikes being disturbed in an evening,’ remarked Eliza. I soon rose, quietly took off my bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and said I would just step out to Bessie- who was, I dared say, in the kitchen- and ask her to ascertain whether Mrs. Reed was disposed to receive me or not to-night. I went, and having found Bessie and despatched her on my errand, I proceeded to take further measures.

It had heretofore been my habit always to shrink from arrogance: received as I had been to-day, I should, a year ago, have resolved to quit Gateshead the very next morning; now, it was disclosed to me all at once that that would be a foolish plan. I had taken a journey of a hundred miles to see my aunt, and I must stay with her till she was better- or dead: as to her daughters’ pride or folly, I must put it on one side, make myself independent of it. So I addressed the housekeeper; asked her to show me a room, told her I should probably be a visitor here for a week or two, had my trunk conveyed to my chamber, and followed it thither myself: I met Bessie on the landing.

‘Missis is awake,’ said she; ‘I have told her you are here: come and let us see if she will know you.’

I did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days. I hastened before Bessie; I softly opened the door: a shaded light stood on the table, for it was now getting dark. There was the great four-post bed with amber hangings as of old; there the toilet-table, the arm-chair, and the footstool, at which I had a hundred times been sentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for offences by me uncommitted. I looked into a certain corner near, half expecting to see the slim outline of a once dreaded switch which used to lurk there, waiting to leap out imp-like and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I approached the bed; I opened the curtains and leant over the high-piled pillows.

Well did I remember Mrs. Reed’s face, and I eagerly sought the familiar image. It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries- to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity.

The well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever- there was that peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised, imperious, despotic eyebrow. How often had it lowered on me menace and hate! and how the recollection of childhood’s terrors and sorrows revived as I traced its harsh line now! And yet I stooped down and kissed her: she looked at me.

‘Is this Jane Eyre?’ she said.

‘Yes, Aunt Reed. How are you, dear aunt?’

I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again: I thought it no sin to forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened on her hand which lay outside the sheet: had she pressed mine kindly, I should at that moment have experienced true pleasure. But unimpressionable natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural antipathies so readily eradicated. Mrs. Reed took her hand away, and, turning her face rather from me, she remarked that the night was warm. Again she regarded me so icily, I felt at once that her opinion of me- her feeling towards me- was unchanged and unchangeable.

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

I felt pain, and then I felt ire; and then I felt a determination to subdue her- to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will. My tears had risen, just as in childhood: I ordered them back to their source. I brought a chair to the bed-head: I sat down and leaned over the pillow.

‘You sent for me,’ I said, ‘and I am here; and it is my intention to stay till I see how you get on.’

‘Oh, of course! You have seen my daughters?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some things over with you I have on my mind: to-night it is too late, and I have a difficulty in recalling them. But there was something I wished to say- let me see-’

The wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken place in her once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the bedclothes round her; my elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, fixed it down: she was at once irritated.

‘Sit up!’ said she; ‘don’t annoy me with holding the clothes fast. Are you Jane Eyre?’

‘I am Jane Eyre.’

‘I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe. Such a burden to be left on my hands- and so much annoyance as she caused me, daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watchings of one’s movements! I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or like a fiend- no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I was glad to get her away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowood? The fever broke out there, and many of the pupils died. She, however, did not die: but I said she did- I wish she had died!’

‘A strange wish, Mrs. Reed; why do you hate her so?’

‘I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband’s only sister, and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family’s disowning her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of her death, he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it- a sickly, whining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night long- not screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it had been his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his own at that age. He would try to make my children friendly to the little beggar: the darlings could not bear it, and he was angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his last illness, he had it brought continually to his bedside; and but an hour before he died, he bound me by vow to keep the creature. I would as soon have been charged with a pauper brat out of a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally weak. John does not at all resemble his father, and I am glad of it: John is like me and like my brothers- he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish he would cease tormenting me with letters for money! I have no more money to give him: we are getting poor. I must send away half the servants and shut up part of the house; or let it off. I can never submit to do that- yet how are we to get on?

Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and always loses- poor boy! He is beset by sharpers: John is sunk and degraded- his look is frightful- I feel ashamed for him when I see him.’

She was getting much excited. ‘I think I had better leave her now,’ said I to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed.

‘Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way towards night- in the morning she is calmer.’

I rose. ‘Stop!’ exclaimed Mrs. Reed, ‘there is another thing I wished to say. He threatens me- he continually threatens me with his own death, or mine: and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great wound in his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to a strange pass: I have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How is the money to be had?’

Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught: she succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed, and sank into a dozing state. I then left her.

More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with her. She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor forbade everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime, I got on as well as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold, indeed, at first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing, reading, or writing, and scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister.

Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour, and take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for occupation or amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me, and they served me for both.

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

One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to be, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that contour gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with features. Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that brow; then followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a straight ridge and full nostrils; then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means narrow; then a firm chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it: of course, some black whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and waved above the forehead. Now for the eyes: I had left them to the last, because they required the most careful working. I drew them large; I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and sombre; the irids lustrous and large.

‘Good! but not quite the thing,’ I thought, as I surveyed the effect: ‘they want more force and spirit’; and I wrought the shades blacker, that the lights might flash more brilliantly- a happy touch or two secured success. There, I had a friend’s face under my gaze; and what did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs on me? I looked at it; I smiled at the speaking likeness: I was absorbed and content.

‘Is that a portrait of some one you know?’ asked Eliza, who had approached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head, and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it was, in fact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was that to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana also advanced to look. The other drawings pleased her much, but she called that ‘an ugly man.’ They both seemed surprised at my skill. I offered to sketch their portraits; and each, in turn, sat for a pencil outline. Then Georgiana produced her album. I promised to contribute a water-colour drawing: this put her at once into good humour. She proposed a walk in the grounds. Before we had been out two hours, we were deep in a confidential conversation: she had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter she had spent in London two seasons ago- of the admiration she had there excited- the attention she had received; and I even got hints of the titled conquest she had made. In the course of the afternoon and evening these hints were enlarged on: various soft conversations were reported, and sentimental scenes represented; and, in short, a volume of a novel of fashionable life was that day improvised by her for my benefit. The communications were renewed from day to day: they always ran on the same theme- herself, her loves, and woes. It was strange she never once adverted either to her mother’s illness, or her brother’s death, or the present gloomy state of the family prospects. Her mind seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety, and aspirations after dissipations to come. She passed about five minutes each day in her mother’s sick-room, and no more.

Eliza still spoke little: she had evidently no time to talk. I never saw a busier person than she seemed to be; yet it was difficult to say what she did: or rather, to discover any result of her diligence. She had an alarm to call her up early. I know not how she occupied herself before breakfast, but after that meal she divided her time into regular portions, and each hour had its allotted task.

Three times a day she studied a little book, which I found, on inspection, was a Common Prayer Book. I asked her once what was the great attraction of that volume, and she said, ‘the Rubric.’ Three hours she gave to stitching, with gold thread, the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large enough for a carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this article, she informed me it was a covering for the altar of a new church lately erected near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her diary; two to working by herself in the kitchen-garden; and one to the regulation of her accounts. She seemed to want no company; no conversation. I believe she was happy in her way: this routine sufficed for her; and nothing annoyed her so much as the occurrence of any incident which forced her to vary its clockwork regularity.

She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than usual, that John’s conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had been a source of profound affliction to her: but she had now, she said, settled her mind, and formed her resolution. Her own fortune she had taken care to secure; and when her mother died- and it was wholly improbable, she tranquilly remarked, that she should either recover or linger long- she would execute a long-cherished project: seek a retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured from disturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous world. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her.

‘Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common: they never had had. She would not be burdened with her society for any consideration. Georgiana should take her own course; and she, Eliza, would take hers.’

Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her time in lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house, and wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an invitation up to town. ‘It would be so much better,’ she said, ‘if she could only get out of the way for a month or two, till all was over.’ I did not ask what she meant by ‘all being over,’ but I suppose she referred to the expected decease of her mother and the gloomy sequel of funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of her sister’s indolence and complaints than if no such murmuring, lounging object had been before her. One day, however, as she put away her account-book and unfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus-

‘Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person’s strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable. Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered- you must have music, dancing, and society- or you languish, you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day; share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes- include all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity. The day will close almost before you are aware it has begun; and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant moment: you have had to seek no one’s company, conversation, sympathy forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an independent being ought to do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer you; then you will not want me or any one else, happen what may. Neglect it-go on as heretofore, craving, whining, and idling- and suffer the results of your idiocy, however bad and insufferable they may be. I tell you this plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am now about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my mother’s death, I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is carried to the vault in Gateshead Church, you and I will be as separate as if we had never known each other. You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this- if the whole human race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you in the old world, and betake myself to the new.’

She closed her lips.

‘You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade,’ answered Georgiana. ‘Everybody knows you are the most selfish, heartless creature in existence: and I know your spiteful  hatred towards me: I have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me about Lord Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above you, to have a title, to be received into circles where you dare not show your face, and so you acted the spy and informer, and ruined my prospects for ever.’ Georgiana took out her handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour afterwards; Eliza sat cold, impassible, and assiduously industrious.

True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here were two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably savourless for the want of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.

It was a wet and windy afternoon: Georgiana had fallen asleep on the sofa over the perusal of a novel; Eliza was gone to attend a saint’s-day service at the new church- for in matters of religion she was a rigid formalist: no weather ever prevented the punctual discharge of what she considered her devotional duties; fair or foul, she went to church thrice every Sunday, and as often on week-days as there were prayers.

I bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped, who lay there almost unheeded: the very servants paid her but a remittent attention: the hired nurse, being little looked after, would slip out of the room whenever she could. Bessie was faithful; but she had her own family to mind, and could only come occasionally to the hall. I found the sick-room unwatched, as I had expected: no nurse was there; the patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic; her livid face sunk in the pillows: the fire was dying in the grate. I renewed the fuel, re-arranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile on her who could not now gaze on me, and then I moved away to the window.

The rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously: ‘One lies there,’ I thought, ‘who will soon be beyond the war of earthly elements. Whither will that spirit- now struggling to quit its material tenement- flit when at length released?’

In pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, recalled her dying words- her faith- her doctrine of the equality of disembodied souls. I was still listening in thought to her well-remembered tones- still picturing her pale and spiritual aspect, her wasted face and sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid deathbed, and whispered her longing to be restored to her divine Father’s bosom- when a feeble voice murmured from the couch behind:

‘Who is that?’

I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days: was she reviving? I went up to her.

‘It is I, Aunt Reed.’

‘Who- I?’ was her answer. ‘Who are you?’ looking at me with surprise and a sort of alarm, but still not wildly. ‘You are quite a stranger to me- where is Bessie?’

‘She is at the lodge, aunt.’

‘Aunt,’ she repeated. ‘Who calls me aunt? You are not one of the Gibsons; and yet I know you- that face, and the eyes and forehead, are quite familiar to me: you are like- why, you are like Jane Eyre!’ I said nothing: I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring my identity.

‘Yet,’ said she, ‘I am afraid it is a mistake: my thoughts deceive me. I wished to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none exists: besides, in eight years she must be so changed.’ I now gently assured her that I was the person she supposed and desired me to be: and seeing that I was understood, and that her senses were quite collected, I explained how Bessie had sent her husband to fetch me from Thornfield.

‘I am very ill, I know,’ she said ere long. ‘I was trying to turn myself a few minutes since, and find I cannot move a limb. It is as well I should ease my mind before I die: what we think little of in health, burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me. Is the nurse here? or is there no one in the room but you?’ I assured her we were alone.

‘Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was in breaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own child; the other-’ she stopped. ‘After all, it is of no great importance, perhaps,’ she murmured to herself: ‘and then I may get better; and to humble myself so to her is painful.’

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

‘Well, I must get it over. Eternity is before me: I had better tell her.- Go to my dressing-case, open it, and take out a letter you will see there.’

I obeyed her directions. ‘Read the letter,’ she said.

It was short, and thus conceived:-

‘MADAM,- Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my niece, Jane Eyre, and to tell me how she is? It is my intention to write shortly and desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence has blessed my endeavours to secure a competency; and as I am unmarried and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and bequeath her at my death whatever I may have to leave.- I am, Madam, etc., etc.,

‘JOHN EYRE, Madeira.’

It was dated three years back.

‘Why did I never hear of this?’ I asked.

‘Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand in lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me, Jane- the fury with which you once turned on me; the tone in which you declared you abhorred me the worst of anybody in the world; the unchildlike look and voice with which you affirmed that the very thought of me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated you with miserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when you thus started up and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear as if an animal that I had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes and cursed me in a man’s voice.- Bring me some water! Oh, make haste!’

‘Dear Mrs. Reed,’ said I, as I offered her the draught she required, ‘think no more of all this, let it pass away from your mind.

Forgive me for my passionate language: I was a child then; eight, nine years have passed since that day.’

She heeded nothing of what I said; but when she had tasted the water and drawn breath, she went on thus-

‘I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be adopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was what I could not endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertion- expose my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to be my torment: my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed which, but for you, I should never have been tempted to commit.’

‘If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to regard me with kindness and forgiveness-’

‘You have a very bad disposition,’ said she, ‘and one to this day I feel it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence, I can never comprehend.’

‘My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to love you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled to you now: kiss me, aunt.’

I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She said I oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water.

As I laid her down- for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she drank- I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine: the feeble fingers shrank from my touch- the glazing eyes shunned my gaze. ‘Love me, then, or hate me, as you will,’ I said at last, ‘you have my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God’s, and be at peace.’

Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the effort to change her habitual frame of mind: living, she had ever hated me- dying, she must hate me still.

The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered half an hour longer, hoping to see some sign of amity: but she gave none.

She was fast relapsing into stupor; nor did her mind again rally: at twelve o’clock that night she died. I was not present to close her eyes, nor were either of her daughters. They came to tell us the next morning that all was over. She was by that time laid out. Eliza and I went to look at her: Georgiana, who had burst out into loud weeping, said she dared not go. There was stretched Sarah Reed’s once robust and active frame, rigid and still: her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid; her brow and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul. A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with gloom and pain: nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or hopeful, or subduing did it inspire; only a grating anguish for her woes- not my loss- and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a form.

Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After air force one shoes a silence of some minutes she observed- ‘With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age: her life was shortened by trouble.’ And then a spasm constricted her mouth for an instant: as it passed away she turned and left the room, and so did I. Neither of us had dropt a tear.

I HAD forgotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also to let down my window-blind. The consequence was, that when timberland shoes 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 moon-light they would have been in complete darkness. They ran to and fro; they crowded together: some sobbed, some stumbled: the confusion was inextricable.

‘Where the devil is Rochester?’ cried Colonel Dent. ‘I cannot find him in his bed.’

‘Here! here!’ was shouted in return. ‘Be composed, all of you:

I’m coming.’

And the door at the end of the gallery opened, and Mr. Rochester advanced with a candle: he had just descended from the upper storey.

One of the ladies ran to him directly; she seized his arm: it was Miss Ingram.

‘What awful event has taken place?’ said she. ‘Speak! let us know the worst at once!’

‘But don’t pull me down or strangle me,’ he replied: for the Misses  Eshton were clinging about him now; and the two dowagers, in vast white wrappers, were bearing down on him like ships in full sail.

‘All’s right!- all’s right!’ he cried. ‘It’s a mere rehearsal of Much Ado about Nothing. Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous.’

And dangerous he looked: his black eyes darted sparks. Calming himself by an effort, he added-

‘A servant has had the nightmare; that is all. She’s an excitable, nervous person: she construed her dream into an apparition, or something of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright. Now, then, I must see you all back into your rooms; for, till the house is settled, she cannot be looked after. Gentlemen, have the goodness to set the ladies the example. Miss Ingram, I am sure you will not fail in evincing superiority to idle terrors. Amy and Louisa, return to your nests like a pair of doves, as you are. Mesdames’ (to the dowagers), ‘you will take cold to a dead certainty, if you stay in this chill gallery any longer.’

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

Not, however, to go to bed: on the contrary, I began and dressed myself carefully. The sounds I had heard after the scream, and the words that had been uttered, had probably been heard only by me; for they had proceeded from the room above mine: but they assured me that it was not a servant’s dream which had thus struck horror through the house; and that the explanation Mr. Rochester had given was merely an invention framed to pacify his guests. I dressed, then, to be ready for emergencies. When dressed, I sat a long time by the window looking out over the silent grounds and silvered fields and waiting for I knew not what. It seemed to me that some event must follow the strange cry, struggle, and call.

No: stillness returned: each murmur and movement ceased gradually, and in about an hour Thornfield Hall was again as hushed as a desert. It seemed that sleep and night had resumed their empire.

Meantime the moon declined: she was about to set. Not liking to sit in the cold and darkness, I thought I would lie down on my bed, dressed as I was. I left the window, and moved with little noise across the carpet; as I stooped to take off my shoes, a cautious hand tapped low at the door.

‘Am I wanted?’ I asked.

‘Are you up?’ asked the voice I expected to hear, viz., my master’s.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And dressed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come out, then, quietly.’

I obeyed. Mr. Rochester stood in the gallery holding a light.

‘I want you,’ he said: ‘come this way: take your time, and make no noise.’

My slippers were thin: I could walk the matted floor as softly as a cat. He glided up the gallery and up the stairs, and stopped in the dark, low corridor of the fateful third storey: I had followed and stood at his side.

‘Have you a sponge in your room?’ he asked in a whisper.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have you any salts- volatile salts?’

‘Yes.’

‘Go back and fetch both.’

I returned, sought the sponge on the washstand, the salts in my drawer, and once more retraced my steps. He still waited; he held a key in his hand: approaching one of the small, black doors, he put it in the lock; he paused, and addressed me again.

‘You don’t turn sick at the sight of blood?’

‘I think I shall not: I have never been tried yet.’

I felt a thrill while I answered him; but no coldness, and no faintness.

‘Just give me your hand,’ he said: ‘it will not do to risk a fainting fit.’

I put my fingers into his. ‘Warm and steady,’ was his remark: he turned the key and opened the door.

I saw a room I remembered to have seen before, the day Mrs. Fairfax showed me over the house: it was hung with tapestry; but the tapestry was now looped up in one part, and there was a door apparent, which had then been concealed. This door was open; a light shone out of the room within: I heard thence a snarling, snatching sound, almost like a dog quarrelling. Mr. Rochester, putting down his candle, said to me, ‘Wait a minute,’ and he went forward to the inner apartment.

A shout of laughter greeted his entrance; noisy at first, and terminating in Grace Poole’s own goblin ha! ha! She then was there. He made some sort of arrangement without speaking, though I heard a low voice address him: he came out and closed the door behind him.

‘Here, Jane!’ he said; and I walked round to the other side of a large bed, which with its drawn curtains concealed a considerable portion of the chamber. An 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?’

‘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- ofSatan 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 timberland boots 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 occasion had been hideously plotted against; and both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion! Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me of this. It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active energy of the other: whence then had arisen Mr. Rochester’s dismay when he heard of Mr. Mason’s arrival? Why had the mere name of this unresisting individual- whom his word now sufficed to control like a child- fallen on him, a few hours since, as a thunderbolt might fall on an oak?

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

‘When will he come? When will he come?’ I cried inwardly, as the night lingered and lingered- as my bleeding patient drooped, moaned, sickened: and neither day nor aid arrived. I had, again and again, held the water to Mason’s white lips; again and again offered him the stimulating salts: my efforts seemed ineffectual: either bodily or mental suffering, or loss of blood, or all three combined, were fast prostrating his strength. He moaned so, and looked so weak, wild, and lost, I feared he was dying; and I might not even speak to him.

The candle, wasted at last, went out; as it expired, I perceived streaks of grey light edging the window curtains: dawn was then approaching. Presently I heard Pilot bark far below, out of his distant kennel in the courtyard: hope revived. Nor was it unwarranted: in five minutes more the grating key, the yielding lock, warned me my watch was relieved. It could not have lasted more than two hours: many a week has seemed shorter.

Mr. Rochester entered, and with him the surgeon he had been to fetch.

‘Now, Carter, be on the alert,’ he said to this last: ‘I give you but half an hour for dressing the wound, fastening the bandages, getting the patient downstairs and all.’

‘But is he fit to move, sir?’

‘No doubt of it; it is nothing serious; he is nervous, his spirits must be kept up. Come, set to work.’

Mr. Rochester drew back the thick curtain, drew up the holland blind, let in all the daylight he could; and I was surprised and cheered to see how far dawn was advanced: what rosy streaks were beginning to brighten the east. Then he approached Mason, whom the surgeon was already handling.

‘Now, my good fellow, how are you?’ he asked.

‘She’s done for me, I fear,’ was the faint reply.

‘Not a whit!- courage! This day fortnight you’ll hardly be a pin the worse of it: you’ve lost a little blood; that’s all. Carter, assure him there’s no danger.’

‘I can do that conscientiously,’ said Carter, who had now undone the bandages; ‘only I wish I could have got here sooner: he would not have bled so much- but how is this? The flesh on the shoulder is torn as well as cut. This wound was not done with a knife: there have been teeth here!’

‘She bit me,’ he murmured. ‘She worried me like a tigress, when Rochester got the knife from her.’

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

‘But under such circumstances, what could one do?’ returned Mason. ‘Oh, it was frightful!’ he added, shuddering. ‘And I did not expect it: she looked so quiet at first.’

‘I warned you,’ was his friend’s answer; ‘I said- be on your guard when you go near her. Besides, you might have waited till to-morrow, and had me with you: it was mere folly to attempt the interview 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 waistcoat. Where did you leave your furred cloak? You can’t travel a mile without that, I know, in this damned cold climate. In your room?- Jane, run down to Mr. Mason’s room,- the one next mine,- and fetch a cloak you will see there.’

Again I ran, and again returned, bearing an immense mantle lined and edged with fur.

‘Now, I’ve another errand for you,’ said my untiring master; you must away to my room again. What a mercy you are shod with velvet, Jane!- a 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.

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 balmy atmosphere?’

‘I do, very much.’

‘You have passed a strange night, Jane.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And it has made you look pale- were you afraid when I left you alone with Mason?’

‘I was afraid of some one coming out of the inner room.’

‘But I had fastened the door- I had the key in my pocket: I should have been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb- my pet lamb- so near a wolf’s den, unguarded: you were safe.’

‘Will Grace Poole live here still, sir?’

‘Oh yes! don’t trouble your head about her- put the thing out of your thoughts.’

‘Yet it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays.’

‘Never fear- I will take care of myself.’

‘Is the danger you apprehended last night gone by now, sir?’

‘I cannot vouch for that till Mason is out of England: nor even then. To live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a 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.’

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.’

‘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,timberland 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.’

THE library looked tranquil enough as I entered it, and the Sibyl- if Sibyl she were- was seated snugly enough in an easy-chair at the chimney-corner. She had on a red cloak and a black bonnet: or rather, a broad-brimmed gipsy hat, tied down with a striped handkerchief under her chin. An extinguished candle stood on the table; she was bending over the fire, and seemed reading in a little black book, like a prayer-book, by the light of the blaze: she muttered the words to herself, as most old women do, while she read; she did not desist immediately on my entrance: it appeared she wished to finish a paragraph.
I stood on the rug and warmed my hands, which were rather cold with sitting at a distance from the drawing-room fire. I felt now as composed as ever I did in my life: there was nothing indeed in the gipsy’s appearance to trouble one’s calm. She shut her book and slowly looked up; her hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I could see, as she raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and black: elf-locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed under her chin, and came half over her cheeks, or rather jaws: her eye confronted me at once, with a bold and direct gaze.

‘Well, and you want your fortune told?’ she said, in a voice as decided as her glance, as harsh as her features.

‘I don’t care about it, mother; ghd uk you may please yourself: but I ought to warn you, I have no faith.’

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

‘Did you? You’ve a quick ear.’

‘I have; and a quick eye and a quick brain.’

‘You need them all in your trade.’

‘I do; especially when I’ve customers like you to deal with. Why don’t you tremble?’

‘I’m not cold.’

‘Why don’t you turn pale?’

‘I am not sick.’

‘Why don’t you consult my art?’

‘I’m not silly.’

The old crone ‘nichered’ a laugh under her bonnet and bandage; she then drew out a short black pipe, and lighting it began to smoke. Having indulged a while in this sedative, she raised her bent body, took the pipe from her lips, and while gazing steadily at the fire, said very deliberately- ‘You are cold; you are sick; and you are silly.’

‘Prove it,’ I rejoined.

‘I will, in few words. You are cold, because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits you.’

She again put her short black pipe to her lips, and renewed her smoking with vigour.

‘You might say all that to almost any one who you knew lived as a solitary dependant in a great house.’

‘I might say it to almost any one: but would it be true of almost any one?’

‘In my circumstances.’

‘Yes; just so, in your circumstances: but find me another precisely placed as you are.’

‘It would be easy to find you thousands.’

‘You could scarcely find me one. If you knew it, you are peculiarly situated: very near happiness; yes, within reach of it. The materials are all prepared; there only wants a movement to combine them. Chance laid them somewhat apart; let them be once approached and bliss results.’

‘I don’t understand enigmas. I never could guess a riddle in my life.’

‘If you wish me to speak more plainly, show me your palm.’

‘And I must cross it with silver, I suppose?’

‘To be sure.’

I gave her a shilling: she put it into an old stocking-foot which she took out of her pocket, and having tied it round and returned it, she told me to hold out my hand. I did. She approached her face to the palm, and pored over it without touching it.

‘It is too fine,’ said she. ‘I can make nothing of such a hand as that; almost without lines: besides, what is in a palm? Destiny is not written there.’

‘I believe you,’ said I.

‘No,’ she continued, ‘it is in the face: on the forehead, about the eyes, in the eyes themselves, in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and lift up your head.’

‘Ah! now you are coming to reality,’ I said, as I obeyed her. ‘I shall begin to put some faith in you presently.’

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

‘I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night,’ she said, when she had examined me a while. ‘I wonder what thoughts are busy in your heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern: just as little sympathetic communion passing between you and them as if they were really mere shadows of human forms, and not the actual substance.’

‘I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad.’

‘Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with whispers of the future?’

‘Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my earnings to set up a school some day in a little house rented by myself.’

‘A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on: and sitting in that window-seat (you see I know your habits)-’

‘You have learned them from the servants.’

‘Ah! you think yourself sharp. Well, perhaps I have: to speak truth, I have an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs. Poole-’  I started to my feet when I heard the name.

‘You have- have you?’ thought I; ‘there is diablerie in the business after all, then!’

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

But, as I was saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you think of nothing but your future school? Have you no present interest in any of the company who occupy the sofas and chairs before you? Is there not one face you study? one figure whose movements you follow with at least curiosity?’

‘I like to observe all the faces and all the figures.’

‘But do you never single one from the rest-or it may be, two?’

‘I do frequently; when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling a tale: it amuses me to watch them.’

‘What tale do you like best to hear?’

‘Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme- courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe- marriage.’

‘And do you like that monotonous theme?’

‘Positively, I don’t care about it: it is nothing to me.’

‘Nothing to you? When a lady, young and full of life and health, charming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank and fortune, sits and smiles in the eyes of a gentleman you-’

‘I what?’

‘You know- and perhaps think well of.’

‘I don’t know the gentlemen here. I have scarcely interchanged a syllable with one of them; and as to thinking well of them, I consider some respectable, and stately, and middle-aged, and others young, dashing, handsome, and lively: but certainly they are all at liberty to be the recipients of whose smiles they please, without my feeling disposed to consider the transaction of any moment to me.’

‘You don’t know the gentlemen here? You have not exchanged a syllable with one of them? Will you say that of the master of the house!’

‘He is not at home.’

‘A profound remark! A most ingenious quibble! He went to Millcote this morning, and will be back here to-night or to-morrow: does that circumstance exclude him from the list of your acquaintance- blot him, as it were, out of existence?’

‘No; but I can scarcely see what Mr. Rochester has to do with the theme you had introduced.’

‘I was talking of ladies smiling in the eyes of gentlemen; and of late so many smiles have been shed into Mr. Rochester’s eyes that they overflow like two cups filled above the brim: have you never remarked that?’

‘Mr. Rochester has a right to enjoy the society of his guests.’

‘No question about his right: but have you never observed that, of all the tales told here about matrimony, Mr. Rochester has been favoured with the most lively and the most continuous?’

‘The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator.’

I said this rather to myself than to the gipsy, whose strange talk, voice, manner, had by this time wrapped me in a kind of dream. One unexpected sentence came from her lips after another, till I got involved in a web of mystification; and wondered what unseen spirit had been sitting for weeks by my heart watching its workings and taking record of every pulse.

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

‘Grateful! I cannot remember detecting gratitude in his face.’

‘Detecting! You have analysed, then. And what did you detect, if not gratitude?’

I said nothing.

‘You have seen love: have you not?- and, looking forward, you have seen him married, and beheld his bride happy?’

‘Humph! Not exactly. Your witch’s skill is rather at fault sometimes.’

‘What the devil have you seen, then?’

‘Never mind: I came here to inquire, not to confess. Is it known that Mr. Rochester is to be married?’

‘Yes; and to the beautiful Miss Ingram.’

‘Shortly?’

‘Appearances would warrant that conclusion: and, no doubt (though, with an audacity that wants chastising out of you, you seem to question it), they will be a superlatively happy pair. He must love such a handsome, noble, witty, accomplished lady; and probably she loves him, or, if not his person, at least his purse. I know she considers the Rochester estate eligible to the last degree; though (God pardon me!) I told her something on that point about an hour ago which made her look wondrous grave: the corners of her mouth fell half an inch. I would advise her black-aviced suitor to look out: if another comes, with a longer or clearer rent-roll,- he’s dished-’

‘But, mother, I did not come to hear Mr. Rochester’s fortune: I came to hear my own; and you have told me nothing of it.’

‘Your fortune is yet doubtful: when I examined your face, one trait contradicted another. Chance has meted you a measure of happiness: that I know. I knew it before I came here this evening. She has laid it carefully on one side for you. I saw her do it. It depends on yourself to stretch out your hand, and take it up: but whether you will do so, is the problem I study. Kneel again on the rug.’

‘Don’t keep me long; the fire scorches me.’

I knelt. She did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, leaning back in her chair. She began muttering,-

‘The flame flickers in the eye; the eye shines like dew; it looks soft and full of feeling; it smiles at my jargon; it is susceptible; impression follows impression through its clear sphere; where it ceases to smile, it is sad; an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness. It turns from me; it will not suffer further scrutiny; it seems to deny, by a mocking glance, the truth of the discoveries I have already made,- to disown the charge both of sensibility and chagrin: its pride and reserve only confirm me in my opinion. The eye is favourable.

‘As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude; it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection for its interlocutor. That feature too is propitious.

‘I see no enemy to a fortunate issue but in ghd straighteners the brow; and that brow professes to say,- “I can live alone, if self-respect and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.” The forehead declares, “Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.”

‘Well said, forehead; your declaration shall be respected. I have formed my plans- right plans I deem them- and in them I have attended to the claims of conscience, the counsels of reason. I know how soon youth would fade and bloom perish, if, in the cup of bliss offered, but one dreg of shame, or one flavour of remorse were detected; and I do not want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution- such is not my taste. I wish to foster, not to blight- to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of blood- no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet- That will do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium. I should wish now to protract this moment ad infinitum; but I dare not. So far I have governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I inwardly swore I would act; but further might try me beyond my strength. Rise, Miss Eyre: leave me;

“the play is played out.”‘

Where was I? Did I wake or sleep? Had I been dreaming? Did I dream still? The old woman’s voice had changed: her accent, her gesture, and all were familiar to me as my own face in a glass- as the speech of my own tongue. I got up, but did not go. I looked; I stirred the fire, and I looked again: but she drew her bonnet and her bandage closer about her face, and again beckoned me to depart. The flame illuminated her hand stretched out: roused now, and on the alert for discoveries, I at once noticed that hand. It was no more the withered limb of eld than my own; it was a rounded supple member, with smooth fingers, symmetrically turned; a broad ring flashed on the little finger, and stooping forward, I looked at it, and saw a gem I had seen a hundred times before. Again I looked at the face; which was no longer turned from me- on the contrary, the bonnet was doffed, the bandage displaced, the head advanced.

‘Well, Jane, do you know me?’ asked the familiar voice.

‘Only take off the red cloak, sir, and then-’

‘But the string is in a knot- help me.’

‘Break it, sir.’

‘There, then- “Off, ye lendings!”‘ And Mr. Rochester stepped out of his disguise.

‘Now, sir, what a strange idea!’

‘But well carried out, eh? Don’t you think so?’

‘With the ladies you must have managed well.’

‘But not with you?’

‘You did not act the character of a gipsy with me.’

‘What character did I act? My own?’

‘No; some unaccountable one. In short, I believe you have been trying to draw me out- or in; you have been talking nonsense to make me talk nonsense. It is scarcely fair, sir.’

‘Do you forgive me, Jane?’

‘I cannot tell till I have thought it all over. If, on reflection, I find I have fallen into no great absurdity, I shall try to forgive you; but it was not right.’

‘Oh, you have been very correct- very careful, very sensible.’

I reflected, and thought, on the whole, I had. It was a comfort; but, indeed, I had been on my guard almost from the beginning of the interview. Something of masquerade I suspected. I knew gipsies and fortune-tellers did not express themselves as this seeming old woman had expressed herself; besides I had noted her feigned voice, her anxiety to conceal her features. But my mind had been running on Grace Poole- that living enigma, that mystery of mysteries, as I considered her. I had never thought of Mr. Rochester.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘what are you musing about? What does that grave smile signify?’

‘Wonder and self-congratulation, sir. I have your permission to retire now, I suppose?’

‘No; stay a moment; and tell me what the people in the drawing-room yonder are doing.’

‘Discussing the gipsy, I daresay.’

‘Sit down!- Let me hear what they said about me.’

‘I had better not stay long, sir; it must be near eleven o’clock.

Oh, are you aware, Mr. Rochester, that a stranger has arrived here since you left this morning?’

‘A stranger!- no; who can it be? I expected no one; is he gone?’

‘No; he said he had known you long, and that he could take the liberty of installing himself here till you returned.’

‘The devil he did! Did he give his name?’

‘His name is Mason, sir; and he comes from the West Indies; from Spanish Town, in Jamaica, I think.’

Mr. Rochester was standing near me; he had taken my hand, as if to lead me to a chair. As I spoke he gave my wrist a convulsive grip; the smile on his lips froze: apparently a spasm caught his breath.

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

‘Do you feel ill, sir?’ I inquired.

‘Jane, I’ve got a blow; I’ve got a blow, Jane!’ He staggered.

‘Oh, lean on me, sir.’

‘Jane, you offered me your shoulder once before; let me have it now.’

‘Yes, sir, yes; and my arm.’

He sat down, and made me sit beside him. Holding my hand in both his own, he chafed it; gazing on me, at the same time, with the most troubled and dreary look.

‘My little friend!’ said he, ‘I wish I were in a quiet island with only you; and trouble, and danger, and hideous recollections removed from me.’

‘Can I help you, sir?- I’d give my life to serve you.’

‘Jane, if aid is wanted, I’ll seek it at your hands; I promise you that.’

‘Thank you, sir. Tell me what to do,- I’ll try, at least, to do it.’

‘Fetch me now, Jane, a glass of wine from the dining-room: they will be at supper there; and tell me if Mason is with them, and what he is doing.’

I went. I found all the party in the dining-room at supper, as Mr. Rochester had said; they were not seated at table,- the supper was arranged on the sideboard; each had taken what he chose, and they stood about here and there in groups, their plates and glasses in their hands. Every one seemed in high glee; laughter and conversation were general and animated. Mr. Mason stood near the fire, talking to Colonel and Mrs. Dent, and appeared as merry as any of them. I filled a wine-glass (I saw Miss Ingram watch me frowningly as I did so: she thought I was taking a liberty, I daresay), and I returned to the library.

Mr. Rochester’s extreme pallor had disappeared, and he looked once more firm and stern. He took the glass from my hand.

‘Here is to your health, ministrant spirit!’ he said. He swallowed the contents and returned it to me. ‘What are they doing, Jane?’

‘Laughing and talking, sir.’

‘They don’t look grave and mysterious, as if they had heard something strange?’

‘Not at all: they are full of jests and gaiety.’

‘And Mason?’

‘He was laughing too.’

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

‘Turn them out of the room, sir, if I could.’

He half smiled. ‘But if I were to go to them, and they only looked at me coldly, and whispered sneeringly amongst each other, and then dropped off and left me one by one, what then? Would you go with them?’

‘I rather think not, sir: I should have more pleasure in staying with you.’

‘To comfort me?’

‘Yes, sir, to comfort you, as well as I could.’

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

‘I, probably, should know nothing about their ban; and if I did, I should care nothing about it.’

‘Then, you could dare censure for my sake?’

‘I could dare it for the sake of any friend who deserved my adherence; as you, I am sure, do.’

‘Go back now into the room; step quietly up to Mason, and whisper in his ear that Mr. Rochester is come and wishes to see him: show him in here and then leave me.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I did his behest. The company all stared at me as I passed straight among them. I sought Mr. Mason, delivered the message, and preceded him from the room: I ushered him into the library, and then I went upstairs.

At a late hour, after I had been in bed ghd hair straighteners some time, I heard the visitors repair to their chambers: I distinguished Mr. Rochester’s voice, and heard him say, ‘This way, Mason; this is your room.’

He spoke cheerfully: the gay tones set my heart at ease. I was soon asleep.

MERRY days were these at Thornfield Hall; and busy days too: how different from the first three months of stillness, monotony,gucci bags and solitude I had passed beneath its roof! All sad feelings seemed now driven from the house, all gloomy associations forgotten: there was life everywhere, movement all day long. You could not now traverse the gallery, once so hushed, nor enter the front chambers, once so tenantless, without encountering a smart lady’s-maid or a dandy valet.
The kitchen, the butler’s pantry, the servants’ hall, the entrance hall, were equally alive; and the saloons were only left void and still when the blue sky and halcyon sunshine of the genial spring weather called their occupants out into the grounds. Even when that weather was broken, and continuous rain set in for some days, no damp seemed cast over enjoyment: indoor amusements only became more lively and varied, in consequence of the stop put to outdoor gaiety.

I wondered what they were going to do the first evening a change of entertainment was proposed: they spoke of ‘playing charades,’ but in my ignorance I did not understand the term. The servants were called in, the dining-room tables wheeled away, the lights otherwise disposed, the chairs placed in a semicircle opposite the arch. While Mr. Rochester and the other gentlemen directed these alterations, the ladies were running up and down stairs ringing for their maids.

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

Meantime, Mr. Rochester had again summoned the ladies round him, and was selecting certain of their number to be of his party. ‘Miss Ingram is mine, of course,’ said he: afterwards he named the two Misses Eshton, and Mrs. Dent. He looked at me: I happened to be near him, as I had been fastening the clasp of Mrs. Dent’s bracelet, which had got loose.

‘Will you play?’ he asked. I shook my head. He did not insist, which I rather feared he would have done; he allowed me to return quietly to my usual seat.

He and his aids now withdrew behind the curtain: the other party, which was headed by Colonel Dent, sat down on the crescent of chairs. One of the gentlemen, Mr. Eshton, observing me, seemed to propose that I should be asked to join them; but Lady Ingram instantly negatived the notion.

‘No,’ I heard her say: ’she looks too stupid for any game of the sort.’

Ere long a bell tinkled, and the curtain drew up. Within the arch, the bulky figure of Sir George Lynn, whom Mr. Rochester had likewise chosen, was seen enveloped in a white sheet: before him, on a table, lay open a large book; and at his side stood Amy Eshton, draped in Mr. Rochester’s cloak, and holding a book in her hand. Somebody, unseen, rang the bell merrily; then Adele (who had insisted on being one of her guardian’s party), bounded forward, scattering round her the contents of a basket of flowers she carried on her arm. Then appeared the magnificent figure of Miss Ingram, clad in white, a long veil on her head, and a wreath of roses round her brow; by her side walked Mr. Rochester, and together they drew near the table. They knelt; while Mrs. Dent and Louisa Eshton, dressed also in white, took up their stations behind them. A ceremony followed, in dumb show, in which it was easy to recognise the pantomime of a marriage. At its termination, Colonel Dent, and his party consulted in whispers for two minutes, then the Colonel called out-

‘Bride!’ Mr. Rochester bowed, and the curtain fell.

A considerable interval elapsed before it again rose. Its second rising displayed a more elaborately prepared scene than the last.

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

Seated on the carpet, by the side of this basin, was seen Mr. Rochester, costumed in shawls, with a turban on his head. His dark eyes and swarthy skin and Paynim features suited the costume exactly: he looked the very model of an Eastern emir, an agent or a victim of the bowstring. Presently advanced into view Miss Ingram.

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

Both her cast of form and feature, her complexion and her general air, suggested the idea of some Israelitish princess of the patriarchal days; and such was doubtless the character she intended to represent.

She approached the basin, and bent over it as if to fill her pitcher; she again lifted it to her head. The personage on the well-brink now seemed to accost her; to make some request:- ‘She hasted, let down her pitcher on her hand, and gave him to drink.’ From the bosom of his robe he then produced a casket, opened it and showed magnificent bracelets and earrings; she acted astonishment and admiration; kneeling, he laid the treasure at her feet; incredulity and delight were expressed by her looks and gestures; the stranger fastened the bracelets on her arms and the rings in her ears. It was Eliezer and Rebecca: the camels only were wanting.

The divining party again laid their heads together: apparently they could not agree about the word or syllable the scene illustrated.

Colonel Dent, their spokesman, demanded ‘the tableau of the whole’; whereupon the curtain again descended.

On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was disclosed; the rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some sort of dark and coarse drapery. The marble basin was removed; in its place stood a deal table and a kitchen chair: these objects were visible by a very dim light proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles being all extinguished.

Amidst this sordid scene, sat a man with his clenched hands resting on his knees, and his eyes bent on the ground. I knew Mr. Rochester; though the begrimed face, the disordered dress (his coat hanging loose from one arm, as if it had been almost torn from his back in a scuffle), the desperate and scowling countenance the rough, bristling hair might well have disguised him. As he moved, a chain clanked; to his wrists were attached fetters.

‘Bridewell!’ exclaimed Colonel Dent, and the charade was solved.

A sufficient interval having elapsed for the performers to resume their ordinary costume, they re-entered the dining-room. Mr. Rochester led in Miss Ingram; she was complimenting him on his acting.

‘Do you know,’ said she, ‘that, of the three characters, I liked you in the last best? Oh, had you but lived a few years earlier, what a gallant gentleman-highwayman you would have made!’

‘Is all the soot washed from my face?’ he asked, turning it towards her.

‘Alas! yes: the more’s the pity! Nothing could be more becoming to your complexion than that ruffian’s rouge.’

‘You would like a hero of the road then?’

‘An English hero of the road would be the next best thing to an Italian bandit; and that could only be surpassed by a Levantine pirate.’

‘Well, whatever I am, remember you are my wife; we were married an hour since, in the presence of all these witnesses.’ She giggled, and her colour rose.

‘Now, Dent,’ continued Mr. Rochester, ‘it is your turn.’ And as the other party withdrew, he and his band took the vacated seats. Miss Ingram placed herself at her leader’s right hand; the other diviners filled the chairs on each side of him and her. I did not now watch the actors; I no longer waited with interest for the curtain to rise; my attention was absorbed by the spectators; my eyes, erewhile fixed on the arch, were now irresistibly attracted to the semicircle of chairs.

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

I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me- because I might pass hours in his presence, and he would never once turn his eyes in my direction- because I saw all his attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object too mean to merit observation. I could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady- because I read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her- because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible.

There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram’s. But I was not jealous: or very rarely;- the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine: she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she used to repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her.

Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adele: pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her; sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with coldness and acrimony. Other eyes besides mine watched these manifestations of character- watched them closely, keenly, shrewdly.

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

I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point- this was where the nerve was touched and teased- this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him.

If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turned to the wall, and (figuratively) have died to them. If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers- jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired her- acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper would have been my admiration- the more truly tranquil my quiescence. But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram’s efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated failure- herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure- to witness this, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.

Because, when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded.

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

‘Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw so near to him?’ I asked myself. ‘Surely she cannot truly like him, or not like him with true affection! If she did, she need not coin her smiles so lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs so elaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she might, by merely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and looking less, get nigher his heart. I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; gucci sunglasses and one had but to accept it- to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace- and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam. How will she manage to please him when they are married? I do not think she will manage it; and yet it might be managed; and his wife might, I verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun shines on.’

I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Rochester’s project of marrying for interest and connections. It surprised me when I first discovered that such was his intention: I had thought him a man unlikely to be influenced by motives so commonplace in his choice of a wife; but the longer I considered the position, education, etc., of the parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming either him or Miss Ingram for acting in conformity to ideas and principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their childhood. All their class held these principles: I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husband’s own happiness offered by this plan convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act.

But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to my master: I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once kept a sharp look-out. It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid. And as for the vague something- was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression?- that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves.

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

Meantime, while I thought only of my master and his future bride- saw only them, heard only their discourse, and considered only their movements of importance- the rest of the party were occupied with their own separate interests and pleasures. The Ladies Lynn and Ingram continued to consort in solemn conferences, where they nodded their two turbans at each other, and held up their four hands in confronting gestures of surprise, or mystery, or horror, according to the theme on which their gossip ran, like a pair of magnified puppets. Mild Mrs.

Dent talked with good-natured Mrs. Eshton; and the two sometimes bestowed a courteous word or smile on me. Sir George Lynn, Colonel Dent, and Mr. Eshton discussed politics, or county affairs, or justice business. Lord Ingram flirted with Amy Eshton; Louisa played and sang to and with one of the Messrs. Lynn; and Mary Ingram listened languidly to the gallant speeches of the other. Sometimes all, as with one consent, suspended their by-play to observe and listen to the principal actors: for, after all, Mr. Rochester and-  because closely connected with him- Miss Ingram were the life and soul of the party.

If he was absent from the room an hour, a perceptible dulness seemed to steal over the spirits of his guests; and his re-entrance was sure to give a fresh impulse to the vivacity of conversation.

The want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly felt one day that he had been summoned to Millcote on business, and was not likely to return till late. The afternoon was wet: a walk the party had proposed to take to see a gipsy camp, lately pitched on a common beyond Hay, was consequently deferred. Some of the gentlemen were gone to the stables: the younger ones, together with the younger ladies, were playing billiards in the billiard-room. The dowagers Ingram and Lynn sought solace in a quiet game at cards.

Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence. The room and the house were silent: only now and then the merriment of the billiard-players was heard from above.

It was verging on dusk, and the dock had already given warning of the hour to dress for dinner, when little Adele, who knelt by me in the drawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed-

‘Voila Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!’

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

‘What can possess him to come home in that style?’ said Miss Ingram. ‘He rode Mesrour (the black horse), did he not, when he went out? and Pilot was with him:- what has he done with the animals?’

As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments so near the window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the breaking of my spine: in her eagerness she did not observe me at first, but when she did, she curled her lip and moved to another casement. The post-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell, and a gentleman alighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not Mr. Rochester; it was a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.

‘How provoking!’ exclaimed Miss Ingram: ‘you tiresome monkey!’ (apostrophising Adele), ‘who perched you up in the window to give false intelligence?’ and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I were in fault.

Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the newcomer entered. He bowed to Lady Ingram, as deeming her the eldest lady present.

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

His manner was polite; his accent, in speaking, struck me as being somewhat unusual,- not precisely foreign, but still not altogether English: his age might be about Mr. Rochester’s,- between thirty and forty; his complexion was singularly sallow: otherwise he  was a fine-looking man, at first sight especially. On closer examination, you detected something in his face that displeased, or rather that failed to please. His features were regular, but too relaxed: his eye was large and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a tame, vacant life- at least so I thought.

The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party. It was not till after dinner that I saw him again: he then seemed quite at his ease.

But I liked his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as being at the same time unsettled and inanimate. His eye wandered, and had no meaning in its wandering: this gave him an odd look, such as I never remembered to have seen. For a handsome and not an unamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no power in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no firmness in that aquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the low, even forehead; no command in that blank, brown eye.

As I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of the girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him- for he occupied an arm-chair drawn close to the fire and kept shrinking still nearer, as if he were cold- I compared him with Mr. Rochester. I  think (with deference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and the rough-coated keen-eyed dog, its guardian.

He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend. A curious friendship theirs must have been: a pointed illustration, indeed, of the old adage that ‘extremes meet.’

Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times scraps of their conversation across the room. At first I could not make much sense of what I heard; for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary Ingram, who sat nearer to me, confused the fragmentary sentences that reached me at intervals. These last were discussing the stranger; they both called him ‘a beautiful man.’ Louisa said he was ‘a love of a creature,’ and she ‘adored him’; and Mary instanced his ‘pretty little mouth, and nice nose,’ as her ideal of the charming.

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

And then, to my great relief, Mr. Henry Lynn summoned them to the other side of the room, to settle some point about the deferred excursion to Hay Common.

I was now able to concentrate my attention on the group by the fire, and I presently gathered that the newcomer was called Mr. Mason; then I learned that he was but just arrived in England, and that he came from some hot country: which was the reason, doubtless, his face was so sallow, and that he sat so near the hearth, and wore a surtout in the house. Presently the words Jamaica, Kingston, Spanish Town, indicated the West Indies as his residence; and it was with no little surprise I gathered, ere long, that he had there first seen and become acquainted with Mr. Rochester. He spoke of his friend’s dislike of the burning heats, the hurricanes, and rainy seasons of that region. I knew Mr. Rochester had been a traveller: Mrs. Fairfax had said so; but I thought the continent of Europe had bounded his wanderings; till now I had never heard a hint given of visits to more distant shores.

I was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat unexpected one, broke the thread of my musings. Mr. Mason, shivering as some one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the fire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of cinder still shone hot and red. The footman who brought the coal, in going out, stopped near Mr. Eshton’s chair, and said something to him in a low voice, of which I heard only the words, ‘old woman,’- ‘quite troublesome.’

‘Tell her she shall be put in the stocks if she does not take herself off,’ replied the magistrate.

‘No- stop!’ interrupted Colonel Dent. ‘Don’t send her away, Eshton; we might turn the thing to account; better consult the ladies.’ And speaking aloud, he continued- ‘Ladies, you talked of going to Hay Common to visit the gipsy camp; Sam here says that one of the old Mother Bunches is in the servants’ hall at this moment, and insists upon being brought in before “the quality,” to tell them their fortunes. Would you like to see her?’

‘Surely, colonel,’ cried Lady Ingram, ‘you would not encourage such a low impostor? Dismiss her, by all means, at once!’

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

‘What does she want?’ asked Mrs. Eshton.

‘”To tell the gentry their fortunes,” she says, ma’am; and she swears she must and will do it.’

‘What is she like?’ inquired the Misses Eshton, in a breath.

‘A shockingly ugly old creature, miss; almost as black as a crock.’

‘Why, she’s a real sorceress!’ cried Frederick Lynn. ‘Let us have her in, of course.’

‘To be sure,’ rejoined his brother; ‘it would be a thousand pities to throw away such a chance of fun.’

‘My dear boys, what are you thinking about?’ exclaimed Mrs. Lynn.

‘I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent proceeding,’ chimed in the Dowager Ingram.

‘Indeed, mama, but you can- and will,’ pronounced the haughty voice of Blanche, as she turned round on the piano-stool; where till now she had sat silent, apparently examining sundry sheets of music. ‘I have a curiosity to hear my fortune told: therefore, Sam, order the beldame forward.’

‘My darling Blanche! recollect-’

‘I do- I recollect all you can suggest; and I must have my will- quick, Sam!’

‘Yes- yes- yes!’ cried all the juveniles, both ladies and gentlemen. ‘Let her come- it will be excellent sport!’

The footman still lingered. ‘She looks such a rough one,’ said he.

‘Go!’ ejaculated Miss Ingram, and the man went.

Excitement instantly seized the whole party: a running fire of raillery and jests was proceeding when Sam returned.

‘She won’t come now,’ said he. ‘She says it’s not her mission to appear before the “vulgar herd” (them’s her words). I must show her into a room by herself, and then those who wish to consult her must go to her one by one.’

‘You see now, my queenly Blanche,’ began Lady Ingram, ’she encroaches. Be advised, my angel girl- and-’

‘Show her into the library, of course,’ cut in the ‘angel girl,’

‘It is not my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either: I mean to have her all to myself. Is there a fire in the library?’

‘Yes, ma’am- but she looks such a tinkler.’

‘Cease that chatter, blockhead! and do my bidding.’

Again Sam vanished; and mystery, animation, expectation rose to full flow once more.

‘She’s ready now,’ said the footman, as he reappeared. ‘She wishes to know who will be her first visitor.’

‘I think I had better just look in upon her before any of the ladies go,’ said Colonel Dent.

‘Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is coming.’

Sam went and returned.

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

‘By Jove, she has taste!’ exclaimed Henry Lynn.

Miss Ingram rose solemnly: ‘I go first,’ she said, in a tone which might have befitted the leader of a forlorn hope, mounting a breach in the van of his men.

‘Oh, my best! oh, my dearest! pause- reflect!’ was her mama’s cry; but she swept past her in stately silence, passed through the door which Colonel Dent held open, and we heard her enter the library.

A comparative silence ensued. Lady Ingram thought it ‘le cas’ to wring her hands: which she did accordingly. Miss Mary declared she felt, for her part, she never dared venture. Amy and Louisa Eshton tittered under their breath, and looked a little frightened.

The minutes passed very slowly: fifteen were counted before the library-door again opened. Miss Ingram returned to us through the arch.

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

‘Well, Blanche?’ said Lord Ingram.

‘What did she say, sister?’ asked Mary.

‘What did you think? How do you feel? Is she a real fortune-teller?’ demanded the Misses Eshton.

‘Now, now, good people,’ returned Miss Ingram, ‘don’t press upon me. Really your organs of wonder and credulity are easily excited: you seem, by the importance you all- my good mama included- ascribe to this matter, absolutely to believe we have a genuine witch in the house, who is in close alliance with the old gentleman. I have seen a gipsy vagabond; she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of palmistry and told me what such people usually tell. My whim is gratified; and now I think Mr. Eshton will do well to put the hag in the stocks to-morrow morning, as he threatened.’

Miss Ingram took a book, leant back in her chair, and so declined further conversation. I watched her for nearly half an hour: during all that time she never turned a page, and her face grew momently darker, more dissatisfied, and more sourly expressive of disappointment. She had obviously not heard anything to her advantage: and it seemed to me, from her prolonged fit of gloom and taciturnity, that she herself, notwithstanding her professed indifference, attached undue importance to whatever revelations had been made her.

Meantime, Mary Ingram, Amy and Louisa Eshton, declared they dared not go alone; and yet they all wished to go. A negotiation was opened through the medium of the ambassador, Sam; and after much pacing to and fro, till, I think, the said Sam’s calves must have ached with the exercise, permission was at last, with great difficulty, extorted from the rigorous Sibyl, for the three to wait upon her in a body.

Their visit was not so still as Miss Ingram’s had been: we heard hysterical giggling and little shrieks proceeding from the library;   and at the end of about twenty minutes they burst the door open, and came running across the hall, as if they were half-scared out of their wits.

‘I am sure she is something not right!’ they cried, one and all.

‘She told us such things! She knows all about us!’ and they sank breathless into the various seats the gentlemen hastened to bring them.

Pressed for further explanation, they declared she had told them of things they had said and done when they were mere children; described books and ornaments they had in their boudoirs at home: keepsakes that different relations had presented to them. They affirmed that she had even divined their thoughts, and had whispered in the ear of each the name of the person she liked best in the world, and informed them of what they most wished for.

Here the gentlemen interposed with earnest petitions to be further enlightened on these two last-named points; but they got only blushes, ejaculations, tremors, and titters, in return for their importunity. The matrons, meantime, offered vinaigrettes and wielded fans; and again and again reiterated the expression of their concern that their warning had not been taken in time; and the elder gentlemen laughed, and the younger urged their services on the agitated fair ones.

In the midst of the tumult, and while my eyes and ears were fully engaged in the scene before me, I heard a hem close at my elbow: I turned, and saw Sam.

‘If you please, miss, the gipsy declares that there is another young single lady in the room who has not been to her yet, and she swears she will not go till she has seen all. I thought it must be you: there is no one else for it. What shall I tell her?’

‘Oh, I will go by all means,’ I answered: and I was glad of the unexpected opportunity to gratify my much-excited curiosity. I slipped out of the room, unobserved by any eye- for the gucci shoes company were gathered in one mass about the trembling trio just returned- and I closed the door quietly behind me.

‘If you like, miss,’ said Sam, ‘I’ll wait in the hall for you; and if she frightens you, just call and I’ll come in.’

‘No, Sam, return to the kitchen: I am not in the least afraid.’ Nor was I; but I was a good deal interested and excited.