"Sir, I do not wish to act against you," I said; and my unsteady voice warned me to curtail my sentence.
"Not in your sense of the word--but in mine you are scheming to destroy me. You have as good as said that I am a married man--as a married man you will shun me, keep out of my way; just now you have refused to kiss me. You intend to make yourself a complete stranger to me; to live under this roof only as Adele's governess; if ever I say a friendly word to you--if ever a friendly feeling inclines you again to me, you will say--'That man had nearly made me his mistress; I must be ice and rock to him'; and ice and rock you will accordingly become."
I cleared and steadied my voice to reply, "All is changed about me, sir; I must change too--there is no doubt of that; and, to avoid fluctuations of feeling, and continual combats with recollections and associations, there is only one way--Adele must have a new governess, sir."
"Oh, Adele will go to school--I have settled that already; nor do I mean to torment you with the hideous associations and recollections of Thornfield Hall--this accursed place--this tent of Achan79--this insolent vault offering the ghastliness of living death to the light of the open sky--this narrow stone hell, with its one real fiend, worse than a legion of such as we imagine. Jane, you shall not stay here, nor will I. I was wrong ever to bring you to Thornfield Hall, knowing as I did how it was haunted. I charged them to conceal from you, before I ever saw you, all knowledge of the curse of the place; merely because I feared Adele never would have a governess to stay if she knew with what inmate she was housed, and my plans would not permit me to remove the maniac elsewhere--though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge; but to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate.
"Concealing the mad-woman's neighborhood from you, however, was something like covering a child with a cloak, and laying it down near a upas-tree;gt that demon's vicinage is poisoned, and always was. But I'll shut up Thornfield Hall; I'll nail up the front door, and board the lower windows; I'll give Mrs. Poole two hundred a year to live here with my wife, as you term that fearful hag; Grace will do much for money, and she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby Retreat, to bear her company, and be at hand to give her aid in the paroxysms, when my wife is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on--"
"Sir," I interrupted him, "you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady; you speak of her with hate--with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel--she cannot help being mad."
"Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don't know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again; it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad do you think I should hate you?"
"I do, indeed, sir."
"Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own. In pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken it would be my treasure still; if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a straight waistcoat. Your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me; if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive; I should not shrink from you with disgust, as I did from her. In your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me. But why do I follow that train of ideas? I was talking of removing you from Thornfield. All, you know, is prepared for prompt departure; to-morrow you shall go. I only ask you to endure one more night under this roof, Jane; and then, farewell to its miseries and terrors forever; I have a place to repair to which will be a secure sanctuary from hateful reminiscences, from unwelcome intrusion--even from falsehood and slander."
"And take Adele with you, sir," I interrupted; "she will be a companion for you."
"What do you mean, Jane? I told you I would send Adele to school. And what do I want with a child for a companion--and not my own child--a French dancer's bastard. Why do you importune me about her? I say, why do you assign Adele to me for a companion?"
"You spoke of a retirement, sir; and retirement and solitude are dull--too dull for you."
"Solitude! solitude!" he reiterated, with irritation. "I see I must come to an explanation. I don't know what Sphynx-like expression is forming in your countenance. You are to share my solitude. Do you understand?"
I shook my head. It required a degree of courage, excited as he was becoming, even to risk that mute sign of dissent. He had been walking fast about the room, and he stopped, as if suddenly rooted to one spot. He looked at me long and hard. I turned my eyes from him, fixed them on the fire, and tried to assume and maintain a quiet, collected aspect.
"Now for the hitch in Jane's character," he said at last, speaking more calmly than, from his look, I had expected him to speak. "The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle--here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble! By God! I long to exert a fraction of Samson's strength, and break the entanglement like tow!"
He recommenced his walk, but soon again stopped, and this time just before me.
"Jane! will you hear reason?" (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear); "because, if you won't, I'll try violence." His voice was hoarse, his look that of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild license. I saw that in another moment, and with one impetus of frenzy more, I should be able to do nothing with him. The present--the passing second of time--was all I had in which to control and restrain him. A movement of repulsion, flight, fear, would have sealed my doom--and his. But I was not afraid--not in the least. I felt an inward power--a sense of influence--which supported me. The crisis was perilous, but not without its charm--such as the Indian, perhaps, feels, when he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I took hold of his clenched hand, loosened the contorted fingers, and said to him soothingly:
"Sit down; I'll talk to you as long as you like, and hear all you have to say, whether reasonable or unreasonable."
He sat down; but he did not get leave to speak directly. I had been struggling with tears for some time. I had taken great pains to repress them, because I knew he would not like to see me weep. Now, however, I considered it well to let them flow as freely and as long as they liked. If the flood annoyed him, so much the better. So I gave way and cried heartily.
Soon I heard him earnestly entreating me to be composed. I said I could not while he was in such a passion.
"But I am not angry Jane; I only love you too well. And you had steeled your little pale face with such a resolute, frozen look, I could not endure it. Hush, now, and wipe your eyes."
His softened voice announced that he was subdued; so, I, in my turn, became calm. Now he made an effort to rest his head on my shoulder; but I would not permit it: then he would draw me to him; no.
"Jane! Jane!" he said, in such an accent of bitter sadness, it thrilled along every nerve I had, "you don't love me, then? It was only my station, and the rank of my wife, that you valued? Now that you think me disqualified to become your husband, you recoil from my touch as if I were some toad or ape."
These words cut me; yet what could I do or say? I ought, probably, to have done or said nothing; but I was so tortured by a sense of remorse at thus hurting his feelings, I could not control the wish to drop balm where I had wounded.
"I do love you," I said, "more than ever; but I must not show or indulge the feeling; and this is the last
time I must express it."
"The last time, Jane? What! do you think you can live with me, and see me daily, and yet, if you still love me, be always cold and distant?"
"No, sir, that I am certain I could not; and therefore I see there is but one way--but you will be furious if I mention it."
"Oh, mention it! If I storm, you have the art of weeping."
"Mr. Rochester, I must leave you."
"For how long, Jane? For a few minutes, while you smooth your hair, which is somewhat dishevelled, and bathe your face, which looks feverish?"
"I must leave Adele and Thornfield; I must part with you for my whole life; I must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange scenes!"
"Of course; I told you you should. I pass over the madness about parting from me. You mean you must become a part of me. As to the new existence, it is all right; you shall yet be my wife--I am not married. You shall be Mrs. Rochester, both virtually and nominally. I shall keep only to you so long as you and I live. You shall go to a place I have in the south of France--a white-walled villa on the shores of the Mediterranean. There you shall live a happy, and guarded, and most innocent life. Never fear that I wish to lure you into error--to make you my mistress. Why do you shake your head? Jane, you must be reasonable, or, in truth, I shall again become frantic."
His voice and hand quivered; his large nostrils dilated; his eye blazed; still I dared to speak.
"Sir, your wife is living; that is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself; if I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your mistress; to say otherwise is sophistical--is false."
"Jane, I am not a gentle-tempered man--you forget that; I am not long enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me and yourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and--beware!"
He bared his wrist, and offered it to me. The blood was forsaking his cheek and lips; they were growing livid; I was distressed on all hands. To agitate him thus deeply, by a resistance he so abhorred, was cruel; to yield was out of the question. I did what human beings do instinctively when they are driven to utter extremity--looked for aid to one higher than man; the words "God help me!" burst involuntarily from my lips.
"I am a fool!" cried Mr. Rochester, suddenly. "I keep telling her I am not married, and do not explain to her why. I forget she knows nothing of the character of that woman, or of the circumstances attending my infernal union with her. Oh, I am certain Jane will agree with me in opinion, when she knows all that I know! Just put your hand in mine, Janet--that I may have the evidence of touch, as well as sight, to prove you are near me--and I will, in a few words, show you the real state of the case. Can you listen to me?"
"Yes, sir; for hours, if you will."
"I ask only minutes. Jane, did you ever hear, or know, that I was not the eldest son of my house--that I had once a brother older than I?"
"I remember Mrs. Fairfax told me so once."
"And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious, grasping man?"
"I have understood something to that effect."
"Well, Jane, being so, it was his resolution to keep the property together. He could not bear the idea of dividing his estate and leaving me a fair portion; all, he resolved, should go to my brother, Russell. Yet, as little could he endure that a son of his should be a poor man. I must be provided for by a wealthy marriage. He sought me a partner betimes. Mr. Mason, a West India planter and merchant, was his old acquaintance. He was certain his possessions were real and vast; he made inquiries. Mr. Mason, he found, had a son and daughter; and he learned from him that he could and would give the latter a fortune of thirty thousand pounds; that sufficed. When I left college, I was sent out to Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me. My father said nothing about her money, but he told me Miss Mason was the boast of Spanish Town for her beauty, and this was no lie. I found her a fine woman, in the style of Blanche Ingram, tall, dark, and majestic. Her family wished to secure me, because I was of a good race;gu and so did she. They showed her to me in parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom saw her alone, and had very little private conversation with her. She flattered me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and accomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to admire her and envy me. I was dazzled--stimulated; my senses were excited; and being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her. There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission. Her relatives encouraged me; competitors piqued me; she allured me; a marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was. Oh, I have no respect for myself when I think of that act! An agony of inward contempt masters me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her. I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her nature. I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candor, nor refinement, in her mind or manners; and I married her--gross, grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was! With less sin I might have--but let me remember to whom I am speaking.
"My bride's mother I had never seen; I understood she was dead. The honey-moon over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and shut up in a lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother, too, a complete dumb idiot. The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom I cannot hate, while I abhor all his kindred, because he has some grains of affection in his feeble mind, shown in the continued interest he takes in his wretched sister, and also in a dog-like attachment he once bore me), will probably be in the same state one day. My father and my brother, Russell, knew all this, but they thought only of the thirty thousand pounds, and joined in the plot against me.
"These were vile discoveries; but, except for the treachery of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger--when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day, with her in comfort; that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile--when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders--even then I restrained myself; I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance. I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt.
"Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details; some strong words shall express what I have to say. I lived with that woman up stairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed; her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprung up fast and rank; they were so strong, only cruelty could check them; and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had, and what giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperategv and unchaste.
"My brother in the interval was dead; and at the end of the four years my father died too. I was rich enough now, yet poor to hideous indigence; a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of me. And I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings; for the doctors now discovered that my wife was mad--her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity. Jane, you don't like my narrative; you look almost sick--shall I defer the rest to another day?"
"No, sir; finish it now; I pity you--I do earnestly pity you."
"Pity, Jane, from some people, is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybr
id, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this moment, with which your eyes are now almost overflowing--with which your heart is heaving--with which your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love; its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion. I accept it, Jane; let the daughter have free advent--my arms wait to receive her."
"Now, sir, proceed; what did you do when you found she was mad?"
"Jane--I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self-respect was all that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes of the world I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonor; but I resolved to be clean in my own sight, and to the last I repudiated the contamination of her crimes, and wrenched myself from connection with her mental defects. Still, society associated my name and person with hers; I yet saw her and heard her daily; something of her breath (faugh!) mixed with the air I breathed; and, besides, I remembered I had once been her husband--that recollection was then, and it is now, inexpressibly odious to me; moreover, I knew that while she lived I could never be the husband of another and better wife; and, though five years my senior (her family and my father had lied to me even in the particular of her age), she was likely to live as long as I, being as robust in frame as she was infirm in mind. Thus, at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless.
"One night I had been awakened by her yells--(since the medical men had pronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up); it was a fiery West Indian night, one of the description that frequently precede the hurricanes of those climates. Being unable to sleep in bed, I got up and opened the window. The air was like sulphur-streams--I could find no refreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room; the sea, which I could hear from thence, rumbled dull like an earthquake--black clouds were casting up over it; the moon was setting in the waves, broad and red, like a hot cannon-ball--she threw her last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest. I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with such language! no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she; though two rooms off, I heard every word--the thin partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish cries.