Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (64 page)

He replied not: he seemed serious — abstracted; he sighed; he half-opened his lips as if to speak: he closed them again.  I felt a little embarrassed.  Perhaps I had too rashly over-leaped conventionalities; and he, like St. John, saw impropriety in my inconsiderateness.  I had indeed made my proposal from the idea that he wished and would ask me to be his wife: an expectation, not the less certain because unexpressed, had buoyed me up, that he would claim me at once as his own.  But no hint to that effect escaping him and his countenance becoming more overcast, I suddenly remembered that I might have been all wrong, and was perhaps playing the fool unwittingly; and I began gently to withdraw myself from his arms — but he eagerly snatched me closer.

“No — no — Jane; you must not go.  No — I have touched you, heard you, felt the comfort of your presence — the sweetness of your consolation: I cannot give up these joys.  I have little left in myself — I must have you.  The world may laugh — may call me absurd, selfish — but it does not signify.  My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.”

“Well, sir, I will stay with you: I have said so.”

“Yes — but you understand one thing by staying with me; and I understand another.  You, perhaps, could make up your mind to be about my hand and chair — to wait on me as a kind little nurse (for you have an affectionate heart and a generous spirit, which prompt you to make sacrifices for those you pity), and that ought to suffice for me no doubt.  I suppose I should now entertain none but fatherly feelings for you: do you think so?  Come — tell me.”

“I will think what you like, sir: I am content to be only your nurse, if you think it better.”

“But you cannot always be my nurse, Janet: you are young — you must marry one day.”

“I don’t care about being married.”

“You should care, Janet: if I were what I once was, I would try to make you care — but — a sightless block!”

He relapsed again into gloom.  I, on the contrary, became more cheerful, and took fresh courage: these last words gave me an insight as to where the difficulty lay; and as it was no difficulty with me, I felt quite relieved from my previous embarrassment.  I resumed a livelier vein of conversation.

“It is time some one undertook to rehumanise you,” said I, parting his thick and long uncut locks; “for I see you are being metamorphosed into a lion, or something of that sort.  You have a ‘faux air’ of Nebuchadnezzar in the fields about you, that is certain: your hair reminds me of eagles’ feathers; whether your nails are grown like birds’ claws or not, I have not yet noticed.”

“On this arm, I have neither hand nor nails,” he said, drawing the mutilated limb from his breast, and showing it to me.  “It is a mere stump — a ghastly sight!  Don’t you think so, Jane?”

“It is a pity to see it; and a pity to see your eyes — and the scar of fire on your forehead: and the worst of it is, one is in danger of loving you too well for all this; and making too much of you.”

“I thought you would be revolted, Jane, when you saw my arm, and my cicatrised visage.”

“Did you?  Don’t tell me so — lest I should say something disparaging to your judgment.  Now, let me leave you an instant, to make a better fire, and have the hearth swept up.  Can you tell when there is a good fire?”

“Yes; with the right eye I see a glow — a ruddy haze.”

“And you see the candles?”

“Very dimly — each is a luminous cloud.”

“Can you see me?”

“No, my fairy: but I am only too thankful to hear and feel you.”

“When do you take supper?”

“I never take supper.”

“But you shall have some to-night.  I am hungry: so are you, I daresay, only you forget.”

Summoning Mary, I soon had the room in more cheerful order: I prepared him, likewise, a comfortable repast.  My spirits were excited, and with pleasure and ease I talked to him during supper, and for a long time after.  There was no harassing restraint, no repressing of glee and vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I suited him; all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him.  Delightful consciousness!  It brought to life and light my whole nature: in his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine.  Blind as he was, smiles played over his face, joy dawned on his forehead: his lineaments softened and warmed.

After supper, he began to ask me many questions, of where I had been, what I had been doing, how I had found him out; but I gave him only very partial replies: it was too late to enter into particulars that night.  Besides, I wished to touch no deep-thrilling chord — to open no fresh well of emotion in his heart: my sole present aim was to cheer him.  Cheered, as I have said, he was: and yet but by fits.  If a moment’s silence broke the conversation, he would turn restless, touch me, then say, “Jane.”

“You are altogether a human being, Jane?  You are certain of that?”

“I conscientiously believe so, Mr. Rochester.”

“Yet how, on this dark and doleful evening, could you so suddenly rise on my lone hearth?  I stretched my hand to take a glass of water from a hireling, and it was given me by you: I asked a question, expecting John’s wife to answer me, and your voice spoke at my ear.”

“Because I had come in, in Mary’s stead, with the tray.”

“And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with you.  Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on for months past?  Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night in day; feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out, of hunger when I forgot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow, and, at times, a very delirium of desire to behold my Jane again.  Yes: for her restoration I longed, far more than for that of my lost sight.  How can it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me?  Will she not depart as suddenly as she came?  To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more.”

A commonplace, practical reply, out of the train of his own disturbed ideas, was, I was sure, the best and most reassuring for him in this frame of mind.  I passed my finger over his eyebrows, and remarked that they were scorched, and that I would apply something which would make them grow as broad and black as ever.

“Where is the use of doing me good in any way, beneficent spirit, when, at some fatal moment, you will again desert me — passing like a shadow, whither and how to me unknown, and for me remaining afterwards undiscoverable?

“Have you a pocket-comb about you, sir?”

“What for, Jane?”

“Just to comb out this shaggy black mane.  I find you rather alarming, when I examine you close at hand: you talk of my being a fairy, but I am sure, you are more like a brownie.”

“Am I hideous, Jane?”

“Very, sir: you always were, you know.”

“Humph!  The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever you have sojourned.”

“Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a hundred times better people; possessed of ideas and views you never entertained in your life: quite more refined and exalted.”

“Who the deuce have you been with?”

“If you twist in that way you will make me pull the hair out of your head; and then I think you will cease to entertain doubts of my substantiality.”

“Who have you been with, Jane?”

“You shall not get it out of me to-night, sir; you must wait till to-morrow; to leave my tale half told, will, you know, be a sort of security that I shall appear at your breakfast table to finish it.  By the bye, I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only a glass of water then: I must bring an egg at the least, to say nothing of fried ham.”

“You mocking changeling — fairy-born and human-bred!  You make me feel as I have not felt these twelve months.  If Saul could have had you for his David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the harp.”

“There, sir, you are redd up and made decent.  Now I’ll leave you: I have been travelling these last three days, and I believe I am tired.  Good night.”

“Just one word, Jane: were there only ladies in the house where you have been?”

I laughed and made my escape, still laughing as I ran upstairs.  “A good idea!”  I thought with glee.  “I see I have the means of fretting him out of his melancholy for some time to come.”

Very early the next morning I heard him up and astir, wandering from one room to another.  As soon as Mary came down I heard the question: “Is Miss Eyre here?”  Then: “Which room did you put her into?  Was it dry?  Is she up?  Go and ask if she wants anything; and when she will come down.”

I came down as soon as I thought there was a prospect of breakfast.  Entering the room very softly, I had a view of him before he discovered my presence.  It was mournful, indeed, to witness the subjugation of that vigorous spirit to a corporeal infirmity.  He sat in his chair — still, but not at rest: expectant evidently; the lines of now habitual sadness marking his strong features.  His countenance reminded one of a lamp quenched, waiting to be re-lit — and alas! it was not himself that could now kindle the lustre of animated expression: he was dependent on another for that office!  I had meant to be gay and careless, but the powerlessness of the strong man touched my heart to the quick: still I accosted him with what vivacity I could.

“It is a bright, sunny morning, sir,” I said.  “The rain is over and gone, and there is a tender shining after it: you shall have a walk soon.”

I had wakened the glow: his features beamed.

“Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark!  Come to me.  You are not gone: not vanished?  I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising sun had rays.  All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane’s tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence.”

The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor.  But I would not be lachrymose: I dashed off the salt drops, and busied myself with preparing breakfast.

Most of the morning was spent in the open air.  I led him out of the wet and wild wood into some cheerful fields: I described to him how brilliantly green they were; how the flowers and hedges looked refreshed; how sparklingly blue was the sky.  I sought a seat for him in a hidden and lovely spot, a dry stump of a tree; nor did I refuse to let him, when seated, place me on his knee.  Why should I, when both he and I were happier near than apart?  Pilot lay beside us: all was quiet.  He broke out suddenly while clasping me in his arms —

“Cruel, cruel deserter!  Oh, Jane, what did I feel when I discovered you had fled from Thornfield, and when I could nowhere find you; and, after examining your apartment, ascertained that you had taken no money, nor anything which could serve as an equivalent!  A pearl necklace I had given you lay untouched in its little casket; your trunks were left corded and locked as they had been prepared for the bridal tour.  What could my darling do, I asked, left destitute and penniless?  And what did she do?  Let me hear now.”